How to jet-lag train your kids.
Three days to go.
We are battening down the hatches over here, but at the same time, we’re starting to relax…a lot. Things have calmed down a ton from yesterday (thank you for all of your sweet, supportive messages), so now we are focusing on the important stuff.
Like jet-lag training. 😉
What the heck am I talking about?
Who knows. This is possibly the worst idea in the world, but it’s really fun. Plus, it might work. I’ll let you know in a few days.
Basically, we’re all staying up later and later every night until we each reach our personal goal. Mine is 3 am. My daughter is shooting for 2 am, and my son is hoping for 1:30. Josh refuses to set a goal because he thinks the whole thing is questionable. However, he is staying up anyway, much to our delight. Maybe because it’s impossible to sleep through the chaos? I don’t know. And I’m slightly delirious, so I don’t really care.
Like I said, this is really fun.
Why are we doing this?
We’re doing this for three reasons.
- Because we can! My kids don’t have camp or school this week, and they’ve never had a chance to stay up as late as they want for as many nights as they want. They are seriously having the time of their lives. Right now, it’s 11:30 pm and I think they are filming a fashion show. Or a workout video. Or maybe it’s a documentary. I don’t know! But I do know that they never play this well together when it’s daylight. Maybe late-night hangouts are the secret to sibling happiness.
- In three days, our flight will leave at 1:30 am, which means that we won’t even leave for the airport until hours after our kids are normally fast asleep. My kids are old enough that they are excited about the flight. We’re flying in lie-flat business class, and they totally get how special that is. They want to be awake and alert for the first part of the flight, and I fully agree. So do I!
- We’re headed to Japan, which is sixteen hours ahead of our time zone here in California. What that means is that a 3 am bedtime means 7 pm in Japan…which actually seems reasonable for our first night there. So my rationale is that if I can make it to 2 am while I’m here in California, by the time I get to Japan, I will be ahead of the game. Like I said, we’ll see.
What about the feet-in-grass thing?
We’re still going to do that, as well! We’re excited to try it!
Am I crazy?
Yes. And apparently I’m wearing a wig, according to multiple sources on a recent trip to Costco.
Have you ever tried to beat jet lag like this? Did it work?
I’d love to hear your stories!
We’ve never really gone anywhere far enough away to try this. My only trick that I’ve used is when we spring forward for DST, we tell the kids that they get to stay up an extra 30 minutes (after we’ve already set the clocks forward an hour!! 😛
Points with a Crew – Ha ha! Well, I’ll let you know if this works 🙂
Have tried it for minimal time differences (CDT to PT) and it does help, but I think you have to do it over several days to have much effect. I have traveled to Europe and the time change is opposite (earlier by 6 or 7 hours). In this case I just tried to adjust once I was there by staying up to normal (or nearly) bedtime there and getting up at normal waking time there. It took several days to readjust my body clock.
VH – Yeah, we are trying it over several days. Right now it’s almost 11 pm and my kids are still going strong (unheard of!). I’ve got another 3 hours before my target time. We will see what happens!
interesting theory, will be fun to learn how it works!