9 and 11-year-old homeschoolers stay up until 4 AM running and screaming, mom only cares because they're keeping her up: 'I wouldn't care if they didn't keep me up too.'

Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor

Oct 7, 2025 8:00 PM EDT

The "Abolish Bedtime" people don't know how bad abolishing bedtime actually is.

One of the most essential habits to instill in your Elementary-aged children is good sleep hygiene. I still feel grateful to my parents for making me go to bed at 8 PM until I was 10. I obviously hated that at the time, but as an adult, I have not had any problems with going to sleep and waking up at a reasonable time nearly every day. I don't always get the whole 8 hours, but I never need to nap to get through the day and don't have problems actively choosing to hit the hay.

The reason we have bedtime is that we have responsibilities that must be accomplished during the daytime. There has never been a time in history when people could loaf around all day, every day, for years without accomplishing anything concrete during their waking hours. Even if you're independently wealthy and don't have work or school to attend to, you probably want to have a regular sleep schedule, even if it entails going to bed at 4 AM and waking up at 11 AM.

The mom in this story is radically unschooling her kids, so clearly she doesn't care much about setting them up for a future where they can maintain a structured schedule. Her kids are up at all hours of the night, and the only reason that annoys her is that it prevents her from getting 8 hours of sleep.
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