Dear Kid,
After extensive scientific research (and by “extensive scientific research” I mean in my opinion) the absolute best time to wake up is 1 ½ minutes before your alarm goes off. This gives you enough time to snuggle under the blankets without falling back to sleep and actually get out of bed before being summoned by All the Hounds from Hell (and by All the Hounds from Hell I mean the alarm clock).
If you can wake up just before you need to, you’ve (probably) gotten the right amount of sleep. Your body (or your mind—or if you’re exceptionally lucky both mind and body) are ready to start the day.
The bar-none, absolutely, completely, unarguably worst time to wake up is 45 minutes after your alarm first mentioned the day was to begin. (Don’t argue—I just said “unarguably”.) Forty-five minutes means you can probably hustle yourself out the door and get wherever you need to be on time—you’ll just look like you slept in a gutter. And you’ll feel that way too because you won’t have had time for breakfast or – gak! – coffee. Oversleep more than 45 minutes and you probably won’t get “there” on time, so you just roll over and go back to sleep or you get up and take your time getting ready because you’re going to be late anyway.
The second worst time to wake up is an hour and a half before your scheduled reveille. (Reveille—the bugle call used to wake up military personnel and prisoners. An hour and a half before reveille—the freakin’ middle of the night.) No one needs to be awake in the middle of the night. I say this with confidence because “middle of the night” shows up at a different time for everyone. My friend who gets up at 4am to tend cow and goat defines “middle of the night” far differently than I do, but would still agree that sleeping time is time for sleeping not for getting up.
The perfect time to be reading Dear Kid Love Mom is – by definition – right now.
Love, Mom
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