Rating: 
Summary: A Good Read for Every Parent....
Review: ...even if you never actually set up your life around a 7 o'clock bedtime. This book was loaned to me by a friend, and I enjoyed reading it. It is easy to get through, not heavy and burdensome, yet gives a lot of good food for thought in child rearing. Actually, if you are an informed parent, a lot here is stuff you probably already know, like TV is bad for children, children need a diet with less sugar and salt, children need to have time to BE children instead of rushed from this lesson to that club...you get the picture. Yet even though I have read this all before (I am a stay at home mom of a 19 yr. old, a 10 yr. old, and a 4 yr. old) over the 19 years of my parenting career, I feel every time I read it, I NEED to hear it again, because as a parent it is easy to drift from the ideals we want for our children.
I recommend all parents read this book. We need to be aware of how our culture and society today is very negative against childhood and so much that we accept as normal is NOT good for children. It takes effort to order our lives so that our children can enjoy their childhoods as children, not as mini teenagers or mini adults.
I can't say I totally agree with the 7 o'clock bedtime concept. I do think she is right in that children need much more sleep than we realize or give them. I do think this works well with babies, toddlers, with children up to the age of 7 or so. However it will not work for all people, especially those who have one or more parents who do not work the usual 9 to 5 hours. I think you could still have your children go to bed at 8 or even 9 and still benefit, especially if your children can get up later in the morning, or if they take a good nap in the day.
The author speaks of the importance of routine in the life of a child, and this is VERY important, no matter what bedtime you exactly use. Routine has a calming effect on children, and they feel safe and secure in routine.
I enjoyed the suble humor of this author; she wrote honestly and not like she was the super perfect mom none of us can ever be. I cheer her for being so honest as to admitting that at times she has served cold cereal for dinner! I have done that on rare occassions! I like her emphasis on simplicity as well.
At the back of this book, the author has a very good list of other parenting books to read. Some were ones I have read; I think anyone reading this book would do well to go on and read others in her list. Parenting takes much effort on our part, and we need to be informed. We can't trust society or the fact that "everyone's doing it" as a model to follow for our parenting. You owe it to your children's well being to read this book and others.
Rating: 
Summary: Loved this book!
Review: Ever since I read this book I have found myself recommending it to all my friends. Those friends who I have lent my copy to read have since gone out and bought their own. I liked the principle enourmously and her gentle approach to it. I found the book to written differently than most parenting books with their air of authority and lofty advice. This book gets down to the nitty gritty. The style of writing was more like an old friend writing a letter to you, sharing what worked for her. Sometimes the writing would wander off the subject a bit, but it was that personal aspect that appealed to me when I read it. Ah ha! But what was it about you may ask. It is about how to get kids into bed by 7 o'clock (you probably geussed this much already) and explores the practical way of scheduling the early evening to accomplish this. It also covers the benefits of the early bedtime and tailoring the schedule to fit different situations, i.e. vacations and sleep overs. The people who will most benefit from this book are people with school age children or children who have to be somewhere at a certain time in the morning. However, I have a toddler and I have started slowly implenting the earlier bedtime with a view of 'starting as we mean to go on'. As an attachment parent, I liked her references to nursing and as part of a tv free family I especially liked her views that tv is overstimulating. I would put this book in with my top ten parenting books.
Rating:
Summary: Great advice for children with night terrors
Review: I am not completely finished with this book yet. But, I do agree with the authors premise of the 7 o'clock bedtime. I have a child who has regular night terrors. These most often occur when he is overtired. Before I even read this book I had charted my son's daily schedule and found that if he was in bed and sleeping by 7:30pm his night terrors were greatly decreased. I had also found that early dinner and no t.v. before bed made the evening so much easier in getting ready for bed. Don't judge this book before you read the majority of it. There is always exceptions to the rule and some late nights, but I think she has a very logical solution for some of our children's sleep and behavioral problems. FYI...I am a stay at home mother, thank God, so I can follow a schedule like this.
Rating:
Summary: Great advice for children with night terrors
Review: I am not completely finished with this book yet. But, I do agree with the authors premise of the 7 o'clock bedtime. I have a child who has regular night terrors. These most often occur when he is overtired. Before I even read this book I had charted my son's daily schedule and found that if he was in bed and sleeping by 7:30pm his night terrors were greatly decreased. I had also found that early dinner and no t.v. before bed made the evening so much easier in getting ready for bed. Don't judge this book before you read the majority of it. There is always exceptions to the rule and some late nights, but I think she has a very logical solution for some of our children's sleep and behavioral problems. FYI...I am a stay at home mother, thank God, so I can follow a schedule like this.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a good idea for alot of kids
Review: I disagree with this authors recommendations. Don't get me wrong -- I agree that lots of small children are not getting enough sleep and parents need to be more careful about making sure their kids get to bed earlier. But like anything else, a good thing carried to extremes ceases to be a good thing. I read reviews of this book in the Chicago newspapers last week. Parents were raving about how much more peaceful and enjoyable their evenings were when their schoolaged children were put to bed at 7:OO PM. Even 11 and 12 year olds were put on this schedule, summer or winter, vacation time and all the time. Of course if you do this, they and the author cautioned, you have to be prepared for 4:30 and 5:00 AM awakenings. Do you think these parents were up with their kids, reading stories, playing games, or making blueberry muffins at that hour? Oh no! You just have to put your foot down and be firm, these parents encouraged. Don't allow the children out of their bedrooms until 7:00 AM. So exactly how do children get all the benfits from extra sleep if they're waking up so early? Instead of sleeping from 7 PM to 5AM, why not allow children to sleep from 8:30 PM to 6:30 AM? That way they can participate in regular after-school sports and other activities their friends and classmates are likely to be involved with. A 7 PM bedtime puts children out of sync with their peers, their parents, and their world. Because they are likely to be awake and alone during the early morning hours (instead of interacting with their parents or others) their lives will be less full and end less enriched. I'll bet the children of parents who read this book end up becoming a sympathetic figure to other kids and parents. They will likely end up feeling left out and left behind. This is just another example of things some parents will do to make their own lives easier at the expense of their children.
Rating:
Summary: Thank God for this book
Review: I don't remember when I've read a more important book about the way to raise kids. Sure, the whole notion seems pretty radical, but the author makes an airtight case about how kids need 12 hours of sleep--and how parents and kids can find a new way of being with each other if they work to rearrange their priorities.
Rating:
Summary: Sensible Advice
Review: I have a personal library of parent/children help books with over 100 different titles and categories. Adding this book to my collection created a new section in my collection.
The idea of 7'o clock bedtime may be unrealistic to working parents or stay-at-home parents, but Schaenen offers many alternative schedules for various lifestyles. But her basic tennent of the importance of sleep in a child's life should not be overlooked. Many children in our neighborhood are up past 10 pm on a school night watching television and their parents wonder why they are so wired. Too much stimulation counters the natural rythyms of a child's brain. After reading this book, we instituted an 8'oclock bedtime for our 2 1/2 year old, cancelled TV completely, and have exprienced more personal time together than ever before. We decided 8 'oclock because our child wakes always at 8 am, so 12 hours is sufficient for his age group.
This book should be a "wake up" call to many parents who seem to have lost the upperhand on children and schedules. It really can change face of your family.
Thanks Inda!
Rating:
Summary: Important advice for parents
Review: I'm not a parent, but I picked this book up when I noticed it on the shelves at the bookstore because it had a great title. Schaenen is absolutely right: kids need more sleep than they get---they shouldn't be sleepy during the day. Putting your kids to bed at 7 is not practical (or even possible) for some parents, as Schaenen acknowledges, but the underlying point remains: kids should not be staying up late. Most interesting to me is the fact (not mentioned in the book) that children *used* to go to sleep at what we consider very early hours. My mother says that her sisters went to bed at 6 or 7pm when they were small, and in fiction I've read (written in earlier times) that seems to hold true---an example would be Noel Streatfield's "Skating Shoes". Another reviewer wrote that the "7 PM bedtime puts children out of sync with their peers, their parents, and their world." I don't really see how that's true. Children shouldn't be playing with their friends late at night, they see their parents earlier in the day, and the world for kids ends in the afternoon---or were you afraid they'd miss "ER"?
Rating:
Summary: No way!!!
Review: My Mom and Dad and I looked at this book to see if it would be good for our family. I don't see how!! My Dad goes to school and works getting home at 5p.m.during the week. For us to be in bed by 7 would ruin our time with him, especially on the weekends when each of us children get a 1 on 1 date with Dad or Mom. We are home schooled 830-130. Maybe if we lived on a farm, having to get up with the sun, it would work, but not for just normal life time. I go to bed when I'm tired usually at 9 and get up by 7, by myself, no alarm clock or Mom wakeing me up, my sisters and brothers are about the same. Maybe her children need that kind of structure, but I would feel left out in her family. 7 is for discipline in our house. We don't even have a TV. We often play in the backyard with football, tag, hide and seek, with Mom and Dad til 8 o clock in the summer and when it's cold it's a time for hot chocolate, popcorn and board games. I know my Mom and Dad love us cause they don't hurry us off to bed and be selfish. Mom and Dad get dates 2 Fridays a month, and I know they love eachother. I guess it depends on how you look at it. In our family, not spending time together would be horrible. We are relaxed in the morning and at night, cause we wake up to love and are tucked in with it at night. I want to know when her children get time to be children with unstructured time?
Rating:
Summary: No way!!!
Review: My Mom and Dad and I looked at this book to see if it would be good for our family. I don't see how!! My Dad goes to school and works getting home at 5p.m.during the week. For us to be in bed by 7 would ruin our time with him, especially on the weekends when each of us children get a 1 on 1 date with Dad or Mom. We are home schooled 830-130. Maybe if we lived on a farm, having to get up with the sun, it would work, but not for just normal life time. I go to bed when I'm tired usually at 9 and get up by 7, by myself, no alarm clock or Mom wakeing me up, my sisters and brothers are about the same. Maybe her children need that kind of structure, but I would feel left out in her family. 7 is for discipline in our house. We don't even have a TV. We often play in the backyard with football, tag, hide and seek, with Mom and Dad til 8 o clock in the summer and when it's cold it's a time for hot chocolate, popcorn and board games. I know my Mom and Dad love us cause they don't hurry us off to bed and be selfish. Mom and Dad get dates 2 Fridays a month, and I know they love eachother. I guess it depends on how you look at it. In our family, not spending time together would be horrible. We are relaxed in the morning and at night, cause we wake up to love and are tucked in with it at night. I want to know when her children get time to be children with unstructured time?
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