Daylight Savings Time Survival Tips and Tricks

Daylight Saving Time begins on Sunday, March 14, 2021, at 2:00 A.M. On Saturday evening, our clocks need to “spring forward” one hour.

How do your kids handle daylight savings? Thankfully, my girls (so far) have been the type to just roll with the punches and we fake it until we make it, but I know some other moms who DREAD daylight savings time!

I thought it might be fun to share a couple of ideas on how we can survive this time together.

The first idea involves adjusting bedtime. Some kids need several days to adjust to the time change. With the extra sunlight at the end of the day they aren’t used to settling down as “early”. It may be easier to shift bedtime a few minutes each day to get them used to going to bed with the extra sunlight. Some people like to shift bedtime 10 minutes each day or you can try 15 minutes every two days. Whatever you think will work better for your family is fine. If you forget to start this at the beginning of the week, you could also try the “Split the difference” method, where the Thursday, Friday & Saturday before the time change, you allow your children to stay up an extra 30 minutes, then put them to bed “on time” Sunday night you’ve adjusted your clocks.

Another popular idea is to just simply wear them out! The day of the time change plan all kinds of physical activity! Throw a dance party, ride bikes, go skating, go to the playground, anything you can do to get them moving and exhausted and ready to go to bed earlier. Of course, this will also tire you out, but the extra relaxing time at the end of the evening will help with that as well.

This last idea (and I absolutely love this one!) is to do absolutely NOTHING! Wait until the day after the time change and just start adjusting bedtimes then. If bedtime is usually 8:30, after the change it will feel like they’re going to bed at 7:30, so just let them stay up an extra 15-30 minutes and slowly adjust to the new time over the course of the week. You can use the time to read an extra book together, watch a movie, or whatever you want.

– By Deni Schiren

Deni Schiren is a Midlothian, VA based mom to two young girls. Before becoming a stay-at-home mom she lived in central Florida and graduated from Daytona Beach College with a degree in Sign Language Interpretation. She worked in Florida’s public school system for a few years before relocating to the Richmond Area with her family. She is now a homeschool mom and runs the ‘Plan-Ahead Parent’ Facebook group and documents her efforts visually on Instagram at the.plan.ahead.parent.