Please, For the Sanity of All Parents, END the Daylight Savings Time

I have been crossing my fingers since I heard about this bill proposal last year. Every parent dreads these two times of the year – daylight savings time. Please stop it. Stop it NOW. My oldest is 10 and I have struggled not just two days a year for 10 years, as it’s not for just one day each time. Changing childrens’ schedules back or forward an hour is not a one day thing. It takes a week or more to get back into the swing of things, and we have to deal with grouchy kids, toddlers not napping on time (or not waking up in time to get the other kids from school!), kids waking up too early, not wanting to go to bed, groggy students at school, complaining, the whining, OMG – just end it, PLEASE.

Apparently, I am not alone in wanting to scrap the parent-torturing time change system. According to an online survey conducted in the Spring and Summer of this year, 74% of Albertans want to get rid of it too! The other 26%, who have clearly never tried to change a 3 year old’s bedtime/wake up time/nap time, include Airlines, and our two Alberta NHL teams, the Flames and the Oilers. They argue that people choosing connecting flights from other provinces will find new flight times too early and will bypass landing in Alberta, and the Hockey teams say that games will start too late, and worry no one will watch them or attend them.

I can’t speak for the travelers going through Alberta, because I always land here, I live here, haha – but am I the only Oilers fan that would LOVE the game to start after the kids’ bedtime? Maybe even after the 13 cups of water and 27 hugs they need after they have already been tucked in, so we can watch the game in peace and have some uninterrupted adult time?

Saskatchewan already scrapped daylight savings time, so this won’t be something new to Canada, or something that the government is unsure of how it will go over. It has been done before, and it’s only a matter of time before other provinces follow. It is a completely outdated practice.

I never understood why we even had the time change – but here is the history of it: It started during World War 1 to conserve energy. It helped people to sync their daily schedules with when the sun was up, so they would use their lights & power less. World War 1 ended 99 years ago, so I would say this practice is slightly outdated.

Daylights Saving Time interrupts sleep patterns, creates confusion, is a nightmare in any household with children, even teens, and has very little benefit. The committee studying the issue is to take it to the Alberta Legislature on October 4, and the Government will decide where to take it from there. Let’s hope the place they decide to take it is the garbage. With a lid, the kind that has a lock you can’t open.

1 thought on “Please, For the Sanity of All Parents, END the Daylight Savings Time”

  1. I spent sometime in Western Australia where theh had opted out of daylight savings time. It seemed that where it was darker earlier all the time people went to bed earlier or stayed in.
    I love the long light evenings whether we’ve gone out for a quick bike ride or cutting the lawn.
    If you enjoy your summer evenings you might find it hard to adjust to. What about keeping kids healthy, active when its darker we do do less dont we??
    I felt literally sick at the thought of losing our extra bit of daylight.

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