The San Jose Mercury News is putting together a story on moms and the new, improved, two-weeks -earlier Daylight Savings Time. Do we love it? Hate it?
I love it. Here’s what I wrote one April, a few years ago, when the then-editor of the Palo Alto Daily News wrote advocating ending daylight savings time altogether:
Dave, Dave, Dave….what were you thinking, calling for the end of daylight savings time? Some of us had been counting the days until we sprung forward since we fell back in October. During the last few weeks of Standard Time we had been wondering if we would actually survive until April. Just wait Dave, just wait a few years until you have one, or two, or three little ones who wake up with the birds.
I mean, do you know what time the birds wake up in March and April, before the time changes? Try 5:15 a.m., at the latest, although there is one noisy little peeper in my tree who likes to beat his buddies to the worm, and starts chirping at 5 a.m. As soon as the birds start singing, Mischa is awake, shaking me, jumping on my stomach, and saying “up up up!” How would you like to wake up at 5 a.m. every morning? (If you want to try it, I’d be happy to give you a few wake-up calls.)
Then there are the evenings. I finish work at 5 p.m., which gives me an hour or so with the kids before dinner. Under Standard Time it was dark and cool and we were stuck inside. I’d start to play a board game with Nadya and Alex, but we’d barely get it set up before Mischa would steal the dice and shove them in his mouth and I’d be begging him to spit them out before he choked. So I’d quickly put the game away, in spite of the protests. Gameless, Nadya and Alex would pull all the cushions off the couch and build forts, but they would soon get into an argument over who had more cushions. I’d settle the argument with a pile of cushions from the other room, then Mischa would knock both forts down, and the kids would be shrieking again.
Then all three of them would start practicing cartwheels. When one crashed into the table, nearly knocking over my vase of daffodils (put there to remind me that spring is on its way), I would once again break my resolution not to use television as a babysitter and I would turn on “Dragon Tales”.
That was in March. But thanks to Daylight Savings Time, we’re having “quality time” again. After I finish work I pull out the balls, hula hoops, jump ropes, and pogo stick and play with the kids in the front yard, since at 5 p.m. the sun is still shining and warm. The kids throw the balls back and forth without fighting. I’m relaxed, because Mischa can’t possibly fit a hula hoop in his mouth. We wave at the neighbors as they get home from work, and no one whines to turn on the TV. My husband comes home to a sane wife, cheerful kids, and furniture that is, in general, where it is supposed to be–and you want me to give all this up?
There is, of course, your point about automobile accident statistics. Indeed, the Monday after time springs forward there are more accidents. But you’re forgetting the big picture–the same statistics show that the Monday after time falls back in October there are less accidents–it’s a wash.
Now there are mothers whose kids go to bed at 7:30 p.m. who would rather it not be daylight at their children’s bedtimes, and would, like you, rather stick to Standard Time. But they have kids that soundly sleep through the sun’s rise no matter what time they are put to bed–these are not the mothers who need every break they can get. The rest of us–whose children are not in their p.j.s quietly reading stories after dinner but instead are ready to rumble–want them to rumble outside (and not in the dark). So think again about this whole Daylight Savings Time thing, Dave, or, when Standard Time returns in the fall, I might just ask you to baby-sit.