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by Ümit Yoker
Time difference with a child - goodbye daily rhythm
4.4.2017
Translation: machine translated
One hour forward, one hour back. Twice a year we are tormented by the time difference. As an adult, changing the clock is usually not a problem, but with a child it can become a source of suffering. And mum is always right with her tips.
On the night of 25 to 26 March, it was that time again. We had to move the clock forward by an hour. This has never been a problem for me before. When you're young, you just party an hour more or less. You still have a hangover the next morning and you can't get rid of the tiredness because of the time difference. As you get older, you simply sleep an hour more or less. Maybe your growling stomach wakes you up a little earlier or later the next morning, but who cares. So you've neither lost nor gained much with that hour. Well, there are also adults who don't cope quite as well with the changeover, but as we all know, things are usually a bit more complicated with children.
My mum was unfortunately right when she warned me several times over the last few weeks that you have to be very well prepared for a time change with a child, if possible a week or two in advance. Of course I didn't do it and laughed inside. I thought to myself that I would simply trick the little one and give her food at the same time. I also wanted to put her to sleep at the same time. But far from it. Because it's not the ticking clock that tells you that something is different, but intuition and the little one's growling stomach.
Before the time change, we had just got to grips with the fact that the little one always eats at roughly the same time and goes to bed and sleeps without ifs and buts. No more crying again. No more hyper "I want to keep playing and not go to bed". No more eternal "stay in bed with the child until it goes to sleep". Yeah, we've made it. Until the time shift! Now it starts all over again. Just because of the time change. Questions and questions are once again running through our heads. When is the right time to eat, when should we put them to bed? 7 pm is now 6 pm, 8 pm is now 7 pm. Oh, this conversion work! The only thing that helps is to wait and stubbornly reintroduce a daily rhythm. My only problem is that it's a vicious circle, because the next time change is on the night of 28 to 29 October. Honestly? There's nothing else to do and hobbies are a foreign concept.
I should probably have taken my mum's advice either way. She's (almost) always right. You know it, but you don't want to admit it. You want to experience it for yourself. She used to give me the tip that you should take an umbrella with you if it looks like rain. I did walk home in the rain quite a few times. Not bad, but very funny in retrospect. That you should take a jacket with you in the transition period, even if it's over 20 degrees in the afternoon. Because overnight the temperatures sometimes drop below 10° degrees. Not bad either, you just feel a bit cold and think "I wish I'd listened to mum". Admit that mum was right? No, of course not.
I have to admit to myself that the time difference did have an effect on my little girl and completely disrupted her daily rhythm. Nothing to do with "it'll work out somehow". I'm now making a note of it for the next time shift in October and hope that I'll be able to cope better thanks to the experience I've had. But it is a child, so it will probably be different than planned. I'd love to give you ten great tips on changing the time with a child, but please don't ask me, because I simply don't have any. Just ask your mum. :-)
And if you weren't affected by the circumstances of the time change and were able to maintain your normal daily rhythm - lucky you!
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I’m the cook, cleaner, police officer, nurse, entertainer, motivator, author, storyteller, coach, organiser, chauffeur, lawyer and judge. To put it simply, I’m a mum to a daughter and not just a (Content) Manager at the office but also at home.
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