G
GIR
Guest
I am not really good with kids. I worked at a daycare over one summer, at which point I discovered kids and me go together like oil and water.
Anyway, sometimes I have to watch my 4 year old niece. She absolutely abhors bedtime which i absolutely cannot sympathize with. When I was a little kid I went to sleep like it was going out of style. I would fall asleep at other peoples’ houses, continue to sleep as my parents carried me to the car and put me to bed when we got home, and wake up in my room like nothing ever happened. My mother even told me that she would often look around the house for me only to find me sound asleep in bed. In short, when I was tired, I went to bed.
My niece is a different story. She stalls: “I’m thirsty”, “turn on the light”, “turn off the light”, “why are YOU still up?” etc. And she often cries and screams when she’s “over tired” I’ve often heard this word, but simply can’t grasp the concept. I can tell when she’s really tired when she just can’t sit still. She fights it with every muscle in her body.
Now, I know a lot about how kids think. I was a kid once, too. I know kids live much more “in the moment” than adults. People have told me that kids hate bedtime because it means giving up that moment in a way. They can’t appreciate that there will be a tomorrow to wake up to when they can have fun and play and do all the things they wanted to do instead of sleep the night before. However. I see things differently, and perhaps this is how I saw it as a kid, even if I couldn’t articulate it so intelligently. Being hungry is unpleasant, so you want to get rid of the hunger. How do you do it? By eating. By analogy, being sleepy is unpleasant, so you want to get rid of that feeling. How do you do it? By sleeping!
But then again, I was a weird kid. I remember back when I was in kindergarten (back when it was half a day, and I had it in the afternoon) I kept asking my mom to switch it to the morning so I could “get it over with”. Even now I don’t think that’s how kids normally think. They want to delay things as much as possible. I even remember being scared of death, even at a young age. I don’t mean simply being killed by accident or disease (although those fears did crop up at reasonable times) I mean being scared of death itself, both individual death and the end of the world, both as described in Revelations and in the various scientific theories of the end of the universe or of the death of the sun.
But I digress. Why won’t my niece just go to bed?!
Anyway, sometimes I have to watch my 4 year old niece. She absolutely abhors bedtime which i absolutely cannot sympathize with. When I was a little kid I went to sleep like it was going out of style. I would fall asleep at other peoples’ houses, continue to sleep as my parents carried me to the car and put me to bed when we got home, and wake up in my room like nothing ever happened. My mother even told me that she would often look around the house for me only to find me sound asleep in bed. In short, when I was tired, I went to bed.
My niece is a different story. She stalls: “I’m thirsty”, “turn on the light”, “turn off the light”, “why are YOU still up?” etc. And she often cries and screams when she’s “over tired” I’ve often heard this word, but simply can’t grasp the concept. I can tell when she’s really tired when she just can’t sit still. She fights it with every muscle in her body.
Now, I know a lot about how kids think. I was a kid once, too. I know kids live much more “in the moment” than adults. People have told me that kids hate bedtime because it means giving up that moment in a way. They can’t appreciate that there will be a tomorrow to wake up to when they can have fun and play and do all the things they wanted to do instead of sleep the night before. However. I see things differently, and perhaps this is how I saw it as a kid, even if I couldn’t articulate it so intelligently. Being hungry is unpleasant, so you want to get rid of the hunger. How do you do it? By eating. By analogy, being sleepy is unpleasant, so you want to get rid of that feeling. How do you do it? By sleeping!
But then again, I was a weird kid. I remember back when I was in kindergarten (back when it was half a day, and I had it in the afternoon) I kept asking my mom to switch it to the morning so I could “get it over with”. Even now I don’t think that’s how kids normally think. They want to delay things as much as possible. I even remember being scared of death, even at a young age. I don’t mean simply being killed by accident or disease (although those fears did crop up at reasonable times) I mean being scared of death itself, both individual death and the end of the world, both as described in Revelations and in the various scientific theories of the end of the universe or of the death of the sun.
But I digress. Why won’t my niece just go to bed?!
Anyway, I think that kids may be unpleased with having to stay in one spot for so long because someone else told them to. If you let them stay up as long as they wanted, they’d have no problem sleeping all the next day 
-- and lecture you on dinosaurs or what was the best episode of My Little Pony. Watch home movies of them, if they like that. Tell them stories about themselves, the interesting and funny things that happened when they were born. Encourage them to talk about themselves. If they are like most people, they aren’t likely to be that interested in hearing about you. If you let them be bores, it will lead them to believe you are a personable, fun-loving and interesting person. Tell them stories about when their parents were little kids, too, they love that. Yes, be shameless. They may see through it, but they probably won’t care.
Oh, my goodness, you have just described me as a child! I stalled like crazy every night, and after being put to bed, I remember lying there looking at the sliver of light under the door, and hearing the sound of grown-up voices, and feeling like I was missing out on something! 
) I’d probably stay up til 12 or 1 am, and sleep til 9 am or so.