A Blog For Mums
At three in the afternoon, you could happily fall asleep standing beside the washing machine. By teatime, you’re wondering whether anyone would notice if you climbed into bed with the children.
Then the house finally goes quiet. You sit down, find something to watch and pick up your phone. Suddenly it’s nearly midnight, and you’re still there.
You haven’t stopped being tired. You just don’t want the evening to end.
If that sounds familiar, there’s a name for this particular trade-off: revenge bedtime procrastination. Dramatic wording, admittedly, for someone watching telly in yesterday’s leggings. But the idea behind it makes a lot of sense.
Revenge bedtime procrastination describes putting off sleep to reclaim personal time, even though you know you’ll pay for it the next morning.
For a mum, the appeal is fairly obvious. Your day might involve work, childcare, school messages, meals, laundry and answering questions about why dogs don’t wear trousers. Even the gaps can get swallowed by jobs you’ve been meaning to do.
Then everyone else goes to bed, and nobody needs anything. You can choose what to watch. You can finish a thought. You can eat something without somebody asking for a bite.
Going to bed means giving up that freedom and moving straight towards another morning of being needed. No wonder “just ten more minutes” sounds reasonable.
The trouble is that ten minutes can become an hour, and the school run will not be starting any later to compensate.
Not every late night is about reclaiming your evening. Sometimes you genuinely want to sleep but feel too wound up.
Physical exhaustion doesn’t automatically mean your mind has settled. Once the distractions disappear, you might start remembering tomorrow’s meeting, the unsigned school form and something awkward you said in 2018.
Stress and worry can make falling asleep harder. Caffeine can also keep you awake, so the coffee that helped you through the afternoon may deserve a little scrutiny.
There’s a useful difference between “I’m choosing to keep watching because this is my time” and “I’ve gone to bed, but I can’t sleep”. Both are frustrating, but they aren’t quite the same problem.
Scrolling is an extremely convenient evening activity. No setup, no clearing away, no requirement to locate your missing knitting needles. You can do it while barely moving a muscle.
But it doesn’t give you much of a finishing point. There’s another video, another comment, another person showing you how to organise a cupboard you were perfectly happy with five minutes ago.
Sometimes the question isn’t whether you deserve downtime. Of course you do. It’s whether what you’re doing still feels enjoyable, or whether you’re carrying on because stopping requires a decision.
If you’ve stopped enjoying the programme and you’re refreshing an app out of habit, you might already have had the good part of your evening.
Telling yourself to “just go to bed earlier” misses something important if late night is your only proper break. Addressing the lack of personal time can be part of breaking the pattern.
Instead, look at whether your evening can contain some time for you before every job is finished. The washing doesn’t need folding before you’re allowed to sit down. A clear kitchen is lovely, but it isn’t an entry requirement for having a rest.
If you have a partner, talk about protecting downtime for both of you. That might mean taking turns with bedtime or sharing the evening jobs more evenly. It needs to be an actual arrangement, rather than you being told to relax while still listening out for everyone.
If you’re parenting alone, the scope may be smaller. Letting a non-urgent chore wait still counts. You don’t have to earn your evening by completing the house.
Try deciding what you want from your downtime before you get lost in it. One episode? A chapter? A chat with a friend? Choosing something satisfying can feel better than spending an hour vaguely looking for entertainment.
Then give yourself a cue to start winding down. A reminder on your phone can help, especially if it means “start getting ready” rather than “you must be asleep immediately”.
Make the transition pleasant: lower the lights, put the phone aside and do something quiet you enjoy. The NHS recommends a regular sleep routine and time to relax before bed. Writing down tomorrow’s jobs can also help if your mind keeps rehearsing them.
You don’t need to transform your evenings overnight. Start with a manageable change and see whether it helps.
An occasional late night enjoying yourself is understandable. Repeatedly cutting your sleep short, though, can leave you tired and irritable during the hours you’re trying to get through.
If you’re regularly unable to sleep despite giving yourself the opportunity, particularly if it’s been happening for months or affecting daily life, speak to your GP.
But if you’re staying up because it feels like the only time you belong to yourself, take that need seriously too. You deserve time off from being useful.
Ideally, some of it should happen before midnight.
Parenthood Sleep
