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Comment by wolframarnold | Hacker News Reader

Only startup founders and not-quite-exec's at other companies have kids that are born with a special gene that programs them to wake up or be woken up at the precise time prescribed by some app only available on iphone. Everybody else's kids (or if you have an Android--sucks for you) wake up at random times at night, scream bloody murder and generally don't follow any schedule other than their own.

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Eh? That link was to the google play store. It's an Android app, and I use it myself on my Android.

GP's kid had to get up to go to day care, he didn't get a vote, and would have had to get up regardless of the alarm clock his dad uses.

What's driving me crazy is all these guys getting their kids to bed by 7:00 or even 8:30. Oh, how I would love to have my kids in bed by those times. Of course, my kids sleep till 9:00AM, but by then, I've been up and gone for 4 hours, so don't get to enjoy a quiet house at either end of the day.

Have you tried any of the traditional "sleep training" stuff (e.g. Ferberizing etc)? We have a 7mo that we just started sleep training last week, and it's going surprisingly well. She goes to bed around 7:30-8pm, sleeps through night, and wakes up around 7am.

Some people prefer to actually parent their children, no matter what time of day it is.

I'd like to echo this. I know it's off-topic, but we've tried "graduated extinction with parental presence" (i.e. I sit in the room next to my son's crib after I put him down but do not pick him up) and it really DOES work if you've got the stomach for it. The problem is that once the grandparents visit for a week and spoil him, you'll need to retrain all over again (which we're doing now, sigh).

But seriously: it really does work. It's hard for the first 2 nights or so but gets exponentially better as time goes on.

Routine routine routine.

Kids will sleep to whatever schedule you set if you decide on a routine and stick to it. Some will take more work than others, but success is possible for nearly everyone.

Exactly, there is always the exception to the rule but if you want your kids to stick to a schedule (which is a good thing to teach them as youngsters) you'd better have a good schedule yourself and guard it like a drill sergeant. I for one make sure my kids (2yo and 4yo) are in bed at 8pm each weekday and have to wake them up at 7am each morning and it works beautifully. Maybe they are a little grumpy when they get up but after a nice warm cup of milk and their morning sandwich they are as happy as can be and ready to run off to school.

It's indeed just routine, routine, routine, ...

A coworker manages to get his kids to bed by 8:30... he dines at 7 which is insanely early by my country's standard (Uruguay).

As brc says, it's routine, routine, routine. I'll definitely get my coworker's advice by the time I have children !! :) .

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