Let us be honest, as much as we love our child(ren) most parents look forward to the kids bedtime. What exactly do parent(s) do when when their child(ren) are asleep. For starters there is different types of stages in my personal opinion.
Stage 1: It’s half an hour until bedtime and your almost home free.
This is the moment when you fantasize about what you’ll be able to finish cleaning, or doing once your kids are in bed. Thinking to yourself, you’ll be able finish the dishes, the laundry, or whatever task you have. Then you think about having time to yourself to either catch up on your favorite book or even curl up to catch up on some TV.
Stage 2: The kids are climbing in their bed.
It’s finally time, the kids are getting in bed!! You can feel the excitement rushing through your body. If you have older kids this parts pretty easy, you put them in their bed and voila your done. I however have younger kids… so it usually plays out different. Keera (5 year old) heads into her bed, we tuck her in and leave a lamp on then she goes to sleep she’s easy to put to bed. Currently I’m sharing my enormous room with my 3 year old so I tuck him into bed, he won’t go to sleep unless he sees me laying in my bed…usually. I take this time to put my 8 month old to bed, since I co-sleep. She’s pretty laid back and after about 5 minutes or so she goes to sleep. Overall on a fantastic night this goes down in about 10 minutes or less, and everyone is asleep except me of course. On a bad night Emilee (8 month old) will fuss for awhile, Zaden(3 year old) will stare up at the ceiling and sing or twiddle his thumbs, and this can go on for an hour or more.
Stage 3: Their all asleep.
Now that all the kid(s) are asleep. You breath a sigh of relief as you head to the kitchen not all parents do this but a lot will take out some “treat” of some sort that they didn’t want to share with their kids. (We all at some point have done this.) Then you go to start the dishes, only to be followed by a feeling of definitely not wanting to do dishes. You’ll usually come up with all sorts of “good” excuses for why you don’t have to do them now, such as the noise might wake the kids, or that you can do them in the morning. A lot of the time, you use the same excuse for your laundry and most other cleaning tasks you told yourself you’d do when the kids are asleep.
Stage 4: Sleep, read or TV/movie.
Now that you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t in fact have to do any cleaning tonight, because you don’t want to wake your kids, and you swear you’ll do it in the morning. You are stuck with three options; go to sleep, read a book, or watch TV/a movie. Most of the time we want to pick the sleep one, since were exhausted by this time. However that doesn’t always get the winning choice, since we figure we deserve to have our alone time. Say you choose to read a book, it begins with you either sitting on the couch, or in your bed ready to read. After awhile not by choice you either begin to fall asleep or even fall asleep then you wake up to realize you fell asleep so you just head back to bed. Then again if you choose to watch the TV/a movie, usual you begin watching then begin to fall asleep or fall asleep. Once again resulting in you heading to bed. Ironically the nights you choose to go to straight to bed result in you not being able to fall asleep, or you just staring up at the ceiling.
Stage 4: Sleep, read or TV/movie.
Now that you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t in fact have to do any cleaning tonight, because you don’t want to wake your kids, and you swear you’ll do it in the morning. You are stuck with three options; go to sleep, read a book, or watch TV/a movie. Most of the time we want to pick the sleep one, since were exhausted by this time. However that doesn’t always get the winning choice, since we figure we deserve to have our alone time. Say you choose to read a book, it begins with you either sitting on the couch, or in your bed ready to read. After awhile not by choice you either begin to fall asleep or even fall asleep then you wake up to realize you fell asleep so you just head back to bed. Then again if you choose to watch the TV/a movie, usual you begin watching then begin to fall asleep or fall asleep. Once again resulting in you heading to bed. Ironically the nights you choose to go to straight to bed result in you not being able to fall asleep, or you just staring up at the ceiling.
Not every parent experiences these stages and yes there is exceptions to the stages where you do decide to in fact actually clean. This is just my personal experience.