Or possibly, my Boy is killing me and I’m just blaming it on the Spring time change because it’s convenient. Really though, if there’s a good argument for not moving the time forward an hour in the Spring, it would be that children who can’t tell the time don’t care about the time change which means they stick to their existing schedule which means they get up too early and go to bed too late which, eventually, kills parents. And dead parents must be bad for the economy.

It seems about this time every year I read about Daylight Saving Time to refresh my memory about why we perform this ritual. The main argument for it is that it significantly reduces energy consumption nationwide (although the miniscule amount of evidence I’ve seen for this is over 20 years old). Saving energy is all well and good but I’m with the farmers who dislike the time change because it makes my life more difficult. Farm animals don’t observe Daylight Saving Time. Try getting a chicken to go to bed an hour earlier and you’ll see what kind of a problem this is. In this regard (and in several others), human children are not entirely unlike clock-ignoring farm animals.

Maybe I’d feel better if we changed the name. Who do they think they’re fooling with the name “Daylight Saving Time?” I know I’m not saving anything. There’s no more daylight in the day after the change than before. Anyone who feels like they’re wasting something by sleeping in after the sun has risen has my permission to jump out of bed at the crack of dawn and do something lively. Go, prance about, go to work, go for a swim, whatever.

But leave the clocks alone. I want that hour. I need that hour. The last thing already sleep-deprived parents need is to have to spend a couple of weeks every six months re-tuning their children’s sleeping schedules.

Comments

1. maggabee on 2005-04-11 08:50:31 wrote: Amen!

2. Scott Hodson on 2005-04-12 14:35:52 wrote: Actually, my wife and I have enjoyed the jump forward because now my sleep in 1 hr later, which allows her to wake up later as well. As for me, I still wake up at 5am anyways so I only get to benefit on weekends.