Staying on CA (PST) time?

[sophie832]

We live in SoCal and are taking our 2-year-old to WDW next month for his first time (it's our 5th trip). At home, he is on a schedule where bedtime is between 8:30 and 9pm, and he wakes up around 7am on his own on the weekends, and by 6:30am during the week. He usually takes a nap in the middle of the day. We would love to be able to stay out a little later with him at WDW, so we were wondering how hard it would be to keep him more towards CA time, so bedtime would be around 11 and we would leave the curtains in the room closed until 9-9:30am. Is that even possible? The night after we get home, he has to be back on his normal schedule because he has daycare the next morning. I worry about transitioning him back so quickly.

Are kids able to transition between time zones easily? Would he know the difference between the time based on sunrise/sunset, so it would be impossible to trick him into staying on CA time? Advice?

 

[Betty Rohrer]

assuming you have a week trip it is going to be hard to follow Cal time for your trip plus what time does your flight get in on your get home day? remember to add an hour from landing time to get to your car for luggage pick up and then the drive home. will he fall back to sleep easy if he naps in the car on drive from airport? I was never that lucky as our girls 10 minutes in car and it would another couple of hours to get them back to sleep even if they were on normal schedule. I would either have someone call off that day or try for another vacation day. and that does not even count on a delayed return flight

 

[jacknsally19]

I know that every kid is different but I can say that my daughter seemed to adapt to new times zones really quickly - like within a day - as soon as I started travelling with her (6 months and onwards) I wish it was that easy for me.

 

[sophie832]

Thanks for the replies!

I think when we get home, regardless of which time zone he feels like he's in, he will probably fall asleep in the car on the way home, and we will just put him straight to bed. Then he will have one full day at home to kind of reset his clock. I suppose if we work hard to tire him out, he will probably go to bed on-time (or early if he feels like he is on East Coast time).

I guess we will just have to play it by ear.

 

[BLAZEY]

Last year I traveled to the UK with DD6 (then 5). I was a 10 hour flight that was delayed in Calgary for an hour to replace a tire. We live on and Island so our Travel day was, left house at 6 am, on the 7am ferry to Vancouver, arrive at airport after ferry, bus and skytrain 10:15, flight left at 2pm. Arrive in London around 10:30 am the next day. She slept for 6 hours of that flight and on the Tube to our apartment. My best advice is to make sure they are physically tired at the end of the day. On the ferry we walked around the outside deck of the boat in laps, played in every available playground. I tried to make sure she was getting her usual 11-12 hours of sleep most nights. It makes the occasional late night easier as she isn't constantly trying to catch up on sleep. She did adjust quickly after the first day we arrived. I hope it works out for you.

 

[Betty Rohrer]

if you are planning to move sleeping child from car to bed without waking, I would try a number of times before you leave as both of my girls this would be problem. was never able to move sleeping would have a couple hour crying and refusing to go back to bed. have had the problem in reverse as we live in Pa and traveled to Cal when girls were little. was bad first few days of our 2 week vacations when they woke up on east coast time. they always mad the time change easier than the adults

 

[unrequited23]

if you are planning to move sleeping child from car to bed without waking, I would try a number of times before you leave as both of my girls this would be problem. was never able to move sleeping would have a couple hour crying and refusing to go back to bed.

We always had to rouse our older son when he was 2 to get him to sleep from the car to the bed. If we just tried to carry him in, he would wake up and be a screaming banshee. We learned this the hard way when we drove trough the night and checked into a hotel at 3am. Not fun.