Are you getting enough?

(This is a sponsored post).

Well, ARE you?  I have to say I’m definitely not.  Maybe it’s something to do with the time of year – a busy social calendar, dark mornings, early sunsets – but it seems to me that the entire Potski Familiski could with getting a bit more sleep at the moment. (Oh, sorry – did you think I was referring to something else?).

Both the Boys seem pale and wan at the moment and are never awake for more than 10 minutes after lights out.  They don’t wake before 7am – at the earliest – and they go to bed at around 8pm.  So that’s more or less 11 hours solid sleep every night – and yet I still fret that they could do with more.  I don’t know how the locals here do it, I really don’t.

We run a pretty tight ship on the bed-time front: the Boys usually get in the bath at around 7.30pm and at around 8pm I’m reminding them to brush their teeth and use the loo before they climb into bed.  Here’s a question; at what age does the necessity to issue such reminders stop, I wonder? I should probably just leave them to it but since the alternative is my younger son waking around 10.30pm and shouting ‘I need the LOO!” at the top of his voice, waking his brother in the process and occasionally resulting in the need for a wipe of the bathroom floor when his aim is off, I’m not prepared to forego it just yet...

I suspect that Russian friends regard me as a bit of a control freak on the subject of bedtimes, as their children seem not to go to bed before 10pm and still have to get up for a school day starting before 8.30.  I know that this is because otherwise many Russian children would not see very much of their parents, and I admire the commitment to spending family time together that this shows, but I’m not sure I would be prepared to sacrifice my peaceful evenings and my sons’ well-being (not in that order, obviously...) for the sake of it.

And when I do finally crawl into bed myself – invariably later than I should due to the siren call of the internet / the next episode of Downton Abbey or Homelands or whichever box-set I’m watching at the time / hanging up the laundry / tidying away the nest of shoes that seems to breed by the back door whenever my back is turned, you can bet that I won’t manage to drop off straight away.  Amazingly, it’s not about the bed – although I’m told that for many people it can be.  I was looking at this sleep study here (this is a sponsored post, after all), and it appears I’m in good company in finding other reasons for my wakefulness; lots of us lie there worrying or wondering about our lives before managing to switch off our brains, it seems.

But whilst it’s good to know that I’m not alone in struggling to fall asleep, that doesn’t really help me in my battle to beat the clock.  And by that, I mean the pressure to drop off before my husband climbs into bed himself.  If I don’t, then I have to face the real impediment to managing it which is, I’m afraid to say, the freight train snores coming from the other side of the bed...

This post is sponsored by Silent Night, but all words and opinions are my own...