It is the time of the year, where we move to days that start to grow shorter and cooler. In Victoria (Australia) on Sunday 6th April (tomorrow morning) we move our clocks back one hour at 3 am for the end of daylight savings.

As you might imagine, my kids have a pretty stable bed time routine which is staggered across the ages, from 7.15pm to 8pm. They all tend to be early rises - waking from 6.15am onwards. As I am a morning person myself, I don’t mind this but when changing back from daylight savings this can pose a problem, mainly for the toddler and preschooler. If I put them to bed at their regular time, they wake up at their regular time, which once the clocks go back an hour becomes the very uncivilised 5.15am.

Over the last couple of years, we have planned to have a late family night on the eve of the end of daylight savings to aid a smooth introduction to the time change. So tonight we will have an extended games session after bath time and then have a movie night together. Mr Infrastructure and I will aim to have Possum and Babagansouki in bed by about 9pm and Thinker and Little Rascal just after that.

The result of this should be (and hopefully like past years it will go to plan!) that they wake up at some time which at least has a 6 in front of it in non daylight saving time. From then on we will work to our routine and with any luck make the switch over in times with out any drama.

For Thinker and Little Rascal they know that they need to stay in bed until after 6am. From the time that they can start reading a digital clock we have enforced a policy of staying in bed until at least 6am. When the mornings are darker and cooler this is not an issue, but at the other end of the spectrum, as we near the start of daylight savings each year, I can often hear stirring before 6am.

This should not be the same this October though as the start date for Daylight Savings for 2008/2009 has been moved forward. This year we will need to move our clocks forward on the first weekend of October - Sunday 5 October 2008, not the last which has been the usual start to daylight savings.

Here’s hoping that all the mums and dads can score an extra hour of sleep tonight!

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