Friday, November 4, 2011

REMINDER: Fall Back

Spring forward -- Fall back.

That means plan to set your clocks & watches back one hour THIS weekend as Daylight Savings Time comes to an end. Yipee, an extra hour of sleep!!

The official time change is 2 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 6th so if you're smart you'll set your clocks back one hour before going to bed Saturday night, to make sure you aren't late for church services or other Sunday morning activities.

If you've got little ones at home and are stressing about how your child is going to transition to the time change, here are two tips to ease the transition and keep sleep deprivation at a minimum. No matter what approach you take, your child will adjust to the time change within a few days to a week:

•Maintain your child's regular sleep, wake and nap times; Try not to compensate for the lost hour by delaying bedtime or allowing your child to sleep in. This however will increase the time it takes to transition. There may be some crankiness from being tired, but this should last only a day or two.

•Make gradual adjustments; This is personally what we've done and it's always worked perfectly for us. We always start on Friday night and make a slow transition throughout the weekend by moving Chase's bedtime earlier by 20 minutes each night. We bank on that come Sunday night he will be right back on schedule.

In addition to changing the clocks, it's a great time to consider changing batteries in your smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms. If you do the two together, you'll never wonder when you last changed them out.

"The most commonly cited cause of non-working smoke alarms is worn or missing batteries," said Stacie Durham, MFD public information officer. "The peak time for home fire fatalities is between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. when most people are sleeping. Smoke alarm maintenance is a simple, effective way to reduce home fire deaths. Working smoke alarms cut the risk of dying in a home fire in half."

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