First and foremost, it is daylight saving time, and not daylight savings time as I both see and hear it referred to by so many people. There is a difference, slight at it may be. It is not a bank account into which you put your accumulated savings of daylight (and earn an utterly meaningless amount of daylight interest). You cannot withdraw daylight from your daylight savings account in the winter to get you an extra hour of sunlight. Small pet peeve, I know, but there it is nevertheless.
I actually like daylight saving time, and I like even more that it has been expanded. It is, like my birthday, yet another harbinger of spring, and spring is probably my favorite season. (And spring is always so much better after a somewhat cold and snowy winter!)
My real pet peeve regarding daylight saving time has plagued me for only a few years. Daylight saving time and parenting don’t mix well. Parenting, especially when your kids are very young, seems to be all about routine. Daylight saving time (and the eventual return to standard time) screw up those routines. It’s not so bad when your kids are infants. But when they are toddlers or preschoolers, it can wreak havoc on a well-ordered household.
Advantage: we can start taking our evening walks again as a family.
Disadvantage: the kids aren’t tired at their usual bedtime.
Advantage: it feels like we have more time to accomplish all our chores in the evening.
Disadvantage: the kids see the extra sunlight as meaning its not time to do those chores yet.
It took me an hour to get the Little Miss to fall asleep last night, this despite putting her to bed nearly an hour later to try to compensate for daylight saving time. I suspect that I would not have had this problem had we not sprung forward early Sunday morning1.
- Okay, who else likes to wake up at 1:59am on Sunday and watch the clock on the cable box change from 1:59 to 3:00am? Anyone? Anyone? ↩
RSS - Posts
Thank you for noting we’re saving daylight, there are no daylight savings. That’s bugged me for years, but I’ve largely given up that fight as a former grammar cop.
I agree entirely about throwing off a toddlers schedule, so much so that I now dread the change over. I don’t typically wake up for the change, but I do like to watch it roll over when I am awake. This time however, I had to get up for with the youngest at 1:30a and was monetarily shocked when I got back to bed at 3:05a.