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Of Night Owls and Early BirdsRead the article this discussion is about
This archived discussion is "read only". » biogardener - The secret is to learn to live with what you have. Brenda, the secret is learning to live with what you were born with. My family is lucky that both parents and all children except one were born in the evening. Night sleep therefore comes to us easily, except to the one brother who was born at 7 a.m. When we came to Canada in 1952, my father was 55 years old and knew no English. The only job he was able to get was as a night watch man in a factory. For 20 years, he struggled trying to learn to sleep in the daytime, but he never did. He only catnapped, and then slept soundly all night on his nights off. He certainly was not able to reset his clock, so I know that you cannot either.I am sorry that your mother did not support you by helping you to live with your inborn preset clock. Hopefully you can learn to ignore what people say and do the best you can with what you have. Maybe, if you are lucky, you can find yourself a night job so that you can go to bed in the morning and get a full morning's sleep. Actually, I am the only one in the family who fully accepted my inborn clock. All my life, I have been the first in the family to get out of bed, because I can't see any sense in trying to sleep when I am wide awake. Everyone else tried to sleep until a reasonable hour and then stayed up late. Life is so much easier if you listen to your body. -- posted by biogardener » Dubh_Sidhe - The sleeper Epimenides, the Greek poet, is said to have fallen alseep in a cave when but a young boy and slept for 57 years--at which time he awoke and found himself possessed of all wisdom. Apparently, I was born sleeping at 3:00 in the morning, and received a slap to my bottom part. To this day I still awaken close to three every morning. Perhaps I should have been put in a cave instead of a bassinette! As I was saying, Epimenides...Enjoyed article and all of your comments. -- posted by Dubh_Sidhe » Red - Traute, you have... quite a concept here.I was born at 7:10 am. When I was a child, my parents always had trouble getting me up in the morning, no matter what time I went to bed. As an adult, I have learned to wake up with the alarm clock, but if I have to get up at 5:30am, I am ready for a nap by seven. Usually though, I get up around 7 but it takes me a couple hours to get going. The morning from 9 till about 7 at night is when I work the best. Not good times to hold down a job. Thanks for submitting this to the Childhood Memories Event. You have submitted a lot of great articles. This one will be under the category Overcoming Obstacles, as I am not sure where else to put it. Thanks for this interesting concept. -- posted by Red » biogardener - Previous Discussion This is a link to a previous discussion on the same topic. You will find some fascinating postings here.This past weekend I presented my "early bird and night owl" theory as entertainment at the 45-year reunion of my graduating Teacher's College class. For the rest of the week-end, many of the 175 former teachers talked to me, telling me that I had helped them to understand their children and grandchildren better. Now isn't that typical of teachers! Always concerned about the children. They all know the birth hours of their offspring, but few of them know their own, and their parents are no longer around to tell them. So I advised them to accept their sleepy hour as the hour of their birth. They certainly all know their sleepy hour. -- posted by biogardener » biogardener - teaching at the wrong time I still don't know how I survived the 25 years of evening classes, but I know that I was always wound up like a spinning top afterwards. I had to concentrate hard to be able to stay awake at 8 p.m., and by the time I got to bed at 11 p.m., my bedtime had passed. Many a night I was not able to sleep for hours afterwards, because I was simply too hyper after the ordeal. Mind you, those classes were the most enjoyable to me and to my students. They were filled with continuous laughter, except that I don't remember why we were laughing. I was not awake.Maybe the same thing happened in Carol's 8 a.m. classes. -- posted by biogardener » MadameDakar - Trapped in an Early Bird World It's been refreshing to read about other people's experiences with being a night owl. I'm a night person, born at 4:35am. I usually get up around 6:30 or 7:30am, work from 9am-6pm and go to sleep around 10 or 11pm. I dread that schedule. It doesn't work for me at all. I'm basically useless until around 4 or 5pm, but even then not really productive or creative until well after dinner.I remember in high school being so frustrated with the schedule the rest of the world seems to work in. Rise at 6am, work from 8 to 5, sleep by 10. I've been frustrated ever since. I spent my teenage summers with my father, walking distance from my grandmother, who rose before the sun, wrote her letters until sunrise, then performed her daily chores of cooking, cleaning and gardening until she dozed off in her chair by 9pm. This schedule worked well for her, so she expected it of me. She could not understand how I could stay up all night and sleep all day. She stated in no uncertain terms her displeasure in my laziness. It didn't seem to matter that I cleaned house and cooked meals for my father, and wrote all my letters in the middle of the night just as well as she did during the day. It was clear that if I wasn't making good use of the day, then I was wasting my time. (She's a wonderful woman who I love dearly, despite our internal time-clock differences.) I was happiest in college when I could take naps during the day, classes in the evening and rehearse or perform in plays at night and then go out after. I had my best conversations and wrote my best papers between 9pm and 3am more or less. I desperately want to be financially able to quit the 9-5 grind and develop a life as a writer according to my own schedule. I'm not sure how this will work with my husband's sleep schedule. He's alert and active the moment he bursts out of sleep and into the bright new day. I've trained him not to speak to me in the morning. He says he's been a night owl before, but that right now it doesn't work with his work schedule. Maybe he was born C-section. Do you have any suggestions, advice, links, references or words of encouragement as to how to go about changing my life to fit my own sleep/wakefulness schedule? I'm very happy to realize that lots of people are night owls. I'm not alone! Thank you for your article. Sincerely, -- posted by MadameDakar » biogardener - Get your spouse's understanding Karin, the first thing for you should be to get the understanding of your spouse and anyone else who might live in your house. He needs to know that you are not lazy but that your clock is not timed the same as his. It works in our house. We respect each other's schedules and cooperate at the times when we are both wide awake. Try to find which times work for both of you.I don't know what kind of work you do, but in some professions it is possible to work evenings or nights. Talk to your boss if the possibility exists for you, or start looking for a different job which allows for it. Just quitting your job suddenly and hoping to make money as a writer may be a bit dangerous. You have to find your way as a writer, and it may be a long road to financial success. -- posted by biogardener » joni_paradis - I think I am going to contradict you theory I am 17 years old, I am about to graduate college with my associates degree, and I have three jobs. I was born at 6:32 p.m. If your theory was true then I should be going to be about 6-10 p.m. My normal bed time is between 2 am to not even sleeping at all. I believe I suffer from DSPS (delayed sleep phase syndrome) which is basically summed up as you can't sleep until early hours of the morning and your body wants to sleep the full 8 hours, but when you try to wake up in the morning you have difficulties. I have to be up 6:30 every morning, I own three alarm clocks and am usually woken up by my family members telling me to wake up for about an hour. For example last night (actually this morning) I went to bed at 4:00 am and had my alarm set for 6:30 am (I had to be at work.) I didn't wake up until 7:30 after every single person (4) in my house tried to wake me numerous amounts of time. I am becoming quite tired and my functionality is dropping tremendously. My 99% and 100% in school are dropping down to 90%-95%. I have fallen asleep during class once because of lack of sleep. And I have even had to pull my car off the road to take a nap because I started to fall asleep while driving. Basically what I am saying is your theory might apply to some people, but not all. And that I am an exhausted 17 year old. If anyone has any reasonable suggestions you can email me @ joni_paradis@yahoo.com or joni_paradis@usa.com.-- posted by joni_paradis » rebeccaarandale - Birth time and sleep Hi, just like to say my daughter was born around 7am, and when she was young she would wake early(like most babies) but then have her "afternoon" nap (which would last 2-3 hours)in the morning not long after 7am rather than later in the day.So you might be on to something!! 
-- posted by rebeccaarandale » donsgal - My DSPS I have had a classic case of DSPS since birth! The day after my mother took me home from the hospital I slept until 11 am. She had to come in to my room to make sure I was alive.I was born at 8:40 am. My "natural" sleep cycle is from 2-3 am until Noon. I am most productive as soon as the sun sets. I find that I am excrutiatingly sensitive to light and prefer darkness overwhelmingly. As a little kid I used to play in the closet during the day with a flashlight because I hated the sunlight. Even now, I dred going out in the sunlight. I feel drained and exhausted. As soon as the sun goes down, however, I am instantly invigorated and have tons of energy which lasts until well after midnight. I am wondering if any of the others who have DSPS find sunlight unpleasant? I am also very sensitive to loud noises and physical discomfort. My father also has DSPS and it has impacted both of our lives tremendously. I have lost many opportunities for career advancement as well as personal sucess because I simply could not get out of bed in the morning. Looking back I see that my father had the same problems. I have a pet theory that DSPS is caused by overproduction of seritonin. Does anybody know if research has been done? I would love to read any information about this. Email me at snoozer@elemeno-p.com. Thanks -- posted by donsgal Please follow the guidelines set forth in the Suite101 Posting Etiquette when adding to the discussion. |
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