‘There’s not enough bourbon’: Daylight savings time is a living hell for parents

Every 12 months, on the second Sunday in March, mother of two Jennifer Sanger is jolted awake by her bright-eyed and bushy-tailed 4-year-old son yelling, “The sun is up and the moon is down. Wake up, Mommy.” The time is an inhumane 6:30 a.m. 

As she reluctantly rolls off the bed, already fearing having to awaken her groggy 6-year-old, Bexley, for varsity the following day, she thinks to herself: “There’s not enough bourbon in the world to get me through this daylight saving hell,” she advised The Post. 

Sanger, a 35-year-old youngsters’s clothes designer from Columbus, Ohio, is simply one of many many dad and mom groaning in regards to the time change. The clocks are set to spring ahead this Sunday at 2 a.m., and fogeys have been dreading it — and the havoc it is going to wreak on youngsters’ bedtimes, wake-ups and tantrum-filled makes an attempt to make it to highschool on time.

“This Sunday, please remember the victims of daylight savings time — parents who have to try to get their kids down at the right bedtime even though the f–king sun is still up,” one pissed off father lamented on Twitter. 

Others are questioning why we even have daylight saving time. “Please stop this nonsense,” begged an equally exasperated mother in a tweet. “As soon as my kids settle into their bedtime routine, daylight savings starts again and messes everything up.”

Many are turning to social media not simply to complain but additionally for ideas and methods to assist little ones acclimate. The standard parenting specialists @biglittlefeelings posted an Instagram story earlier this week with some useful steerage.

“It’s heeeeere,” the story declared earlier than providing up options, together with a well-liked technique through which dad and mom step by step shift youngsters schedules up in 15-minute increments to arrange for the massive shift.

But Upper West Side medical social employee Kelly Nadel mentioned mothers and dads shouldn’t strive too onerous to implement such coping mechanisms.

“Parents don’t necessarily need to stress themselves out trying to get their kids to bed 15 minutes earlier or not allowing screen-time [on TVs, tablets or phone] an hour before their new bedtime,” Nadel, 40, advised The Post. 

Instead, simply go along with it, take some deep breaths and keep in mind that this, too, shall go.

“[It’s] not forever,” she mentioned. “The adjustment period is only about two or three weeks every year when your kids are little. Then, around the ages of 4 to 6, they’ll gradually become less affected.”

Shana Bull, 40, lamented that the 15-minute bedtime trick didn’t work on her 6-year-old son, Ryeson, or the household pet, a 20-year-old Yorkie named Macy, who additionally struggles with the clocks altering.

“Macy gets mad when her walks, dinner or sleep aren’t on schedule,” mentioned Bull. “With dogs it seems their internal clock runs a little faster, so she feels like she’s losing two hours while we’re only losing one. Either way, my whole house is chaos.”

Meanwhile, Ryeson, who has cystic fibrosis and a spotlight deficit hyperactivity dysfunction, is prone to wake at 4 a.m.

“He doesn’t want his tablet, he wants me or my husband, Jeff, to engage with him,” mentioned Bull, a youngsters’s e-book writer who relies in California. “So one night I’ll get up and be with him, and Jeff will take over the next night.” 

It’s so unhealthy, she’s contemplating making a run for it.

“[We] actually went on a honeymoon to Mexico during daylight saving,” she mentioned. “So we sometimes joke about dropping the kid off at grandma’s and running away to Mexico around this time of year.”