Getting enough sleep is important for our health, energy levels and mood, but it’s not that easy to do that. Late-night scrolling and binging our favorite TV shows at night takes away from us that time that we could have spent sleeping, but every morning when we regret it, we do the same the next night. Weirdly enough, we appreciate sleep, but we rarely award ourselves by getting enough of it.
It’s one thing when it is our own choice to deprive ourselves of sleep, but it’s another when someone else thinks you should get up earlier. A teen is woken up by their mom at 4:30 AM every morning even though they live near the school, so it’s not necessary to be awake at that hour. However, the mom thinks that she is helping her child to enter the adult world.
More info: Reddit
This high school student thought that waking up at 6 AM was a reasonable time to make it in time to school, but their mom wakes them up at 4:30 every morning
Image credits: woodleywonderworks (not the actual photo)
The Original Poster (OP) or dezzmuchado on Reddit is 18 years old and they still go to high school. For them, school starts at 7:15, which is a blasphemy in itself, but if we assume that they live in the US where lessons usually start between 7 AM and 8 AM, this time is relatively normal.
If we would compare to schools in the UK where most of them start between 8:20 AM and 9:00 AM, the OP has to get there quite early. Lucky for them, they live just 5 minutes away from school, so they don’t have to wake up that early as they don’t have a lengthy commute.
The OP can wake up at 6 in the morning and have enough time to get ready and leave the house at 7:05 to be in time for the first lesson. Or at least it would work out perfectly, if they had the chance to do that.
The OP lives close to their school and lessons start at 7:15 so waking up earlier than 6 is unnecessary
Image credits: dezzmuchado
Apparently, their mom thinks that 6 AM is too late and every morning comes into her child's room to wake them up at 4:30 AM. She has a few methods like tapping the teen, flickering the lights in the room and letting in their puppy to wake them up.
It makes the OP quite miserable and that leads them to cry because waking up at 6 is already torture, so 4:30 is even more unbearable. They tried to reason with their mom and explained that there is no need for them to wake up at such a time because as mentioned before, the school is not that far.
In a reply to a person’s comment, dezzmuchado said that they live with their mom and see their dad whenever they can, but they don’t want to complain to him about being woken up early because the two parents don’t get along well: “Complaining to one about the other causes so much drama and the drama is never about what I was complaining about, they just use it as an excuse to argue with each other.”
Image credits: dezzmuchado
But their mom thinks that she is helping her child to be an early bird and is preparing them for being an adult
Image credits: dezzmuchado
The OP was fed up with not getting enough sleep so they locked their door at night
Image credits: dezzmuchado
But the reason the mom wakes up her child so early is because she wants to make them an early bird, which is what all adults are. According to Edison Research’s study, commissioned by the Country Radio Seminar, most Americans wake up between 6 and 6:30am (23 percent) and only 8 percent of people are awake before 5 AM, so people do get up early as they probably have to go to work, but it’s safe to assume that they get up as late as they can to make it in time.
The convincing was unsuccessful so the mom still forced the OP to wake up earlier than needed. In order to sleep an extra hour and a half, the teenager decided to lock their door. They finally managed to sleep until 6 and felt better than ever, unlike their mom who was angry and felt that it was disrespectful to “cut off communication with someone for that long.”
The mom was so mad that she threatened to take the door away, which could be considered a violation of privacy because even though the OP is still in high school, they are legally an adult.
But the teen still thinks that they could have been the one in the wrong here as they explained, “May have been TA because now she’s pissed and said locking doors is rude.”
The mom was really angry and the OP thinks they might have gone too far
Image credits: dezzmuchado
However, other redditors didn’t agree with that. They passionately talked about how important it is for a young person to have enough sleep, how damaging it is to be sleep deprived and that being a night owl or an early bird isn’t that easy to change. They believed that the mom is unreasonable and rude, especially knowing that there is no need to be up that early. Some even mentioned getting revenge on their mother, but in an update dezzmuchado said they can’t do that because then they would definitely get their door removed.
What do you think of this story? Do you think it’s healthier to wake up earlier and that the mom is setting her kid up for success? Or do you think that she should trust that her child will be fine regardless of what chronotype they have? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
But people in the comments thought the mom was too controlling and considered her behavior to abusive
