The Ides of March – For Parents That Is
March is a tough month for Parents.
There’s the upcoming Spring Break when our children need additional attention and entertainment from their parents while they haunt our home. Kids have their last day of class next Friday, March 17th, then they won’t be back in school again until Monday, April 3rd. See Schedule.
And there’s the upcoming Daylight Savings Time on Sunday, March 12th when we “spring forward” an hour… Wait… Didn’t we vote for that to stop happening?
On Virgin Radio 107.3 this morning, Bailey & Johnny, hosts of “Who’s the Bad Guy” held an informal poll asking whether their listeners were either FOR or AGAINST the time change. I was a bit alarmed to hear that 54% of their listeners were for it!
What?!
I rationalized this with the thought that their listening demographic probably lack parents because we’re all busy getting our children up and out to school. The only reason I had a chance to listen to the show this am is because I was ferrying my daughter to yet another choir practice and drama rehearsal.
However, as I sat down and started writing my opinions, I fact checked and was shocked to find out that I was misled. In fact, most people in BC are FOR changing our clocks twice a year! The Engagement Survey which ran from June 24th to July 19th in 2019 resulted in nearly a quarter million BC-ites completing it resulting in 93% of respondents indicating they would prefer to move to permanent Daylight Savings Time!
I’m literally shocked. I don’t know how I truly believed the opposite was true – maybe a social media post that snuck under my bullshit radar.
And while my argument that parents are really busy and can’t afford the time to fill out surveys, a quarter million sample size is certainly a far weightier argument than the maybe a few hundred sample size which responded to Virgin Radio.
The BC Government page lists some of the reasons, and I can certainly relate to some of them, such as health and safety.
However, they didn't list one of the more important ‘cons’ for parents, that being, our children turn absolutely feral creatures with even one less hour of sleep!
So now, while I have to give up my sacred cow argument and concede most BC-ites DON'T hate the twice-a-year time change, it would have been nice…really nice…if the BC government could have arranged for the Spring Break to start one week early, or the time change take place one week later.
We parents would have loved to let our kids sleep in after the time change. Instead, we must pry our tired monsters – err…children out of bed on Monday, March 13th at the “new” 7:00 am with their internal chronometers screaming “it’s still 6:00 am in the morning”. And we'll have to repeat this for the remaining week of school. Not fun.
And I’m sure the province’s teachers would agree!
Mathieu Powell