"I Can’t Imagine Growing up in This Chaos" — Mom Shares Night Owl Family Bedtime Routine

A mom gave a snippet of what a bedtime routine looks like for a "night owl family," i.e., folks who go to bed at late hours.

Emily Boazman (@emilyboazman) posted a TikTok that featured cut together recordings of how her and her kids eat dinner and get themselves ready to go to sleep for the night, and commenters who replied to her clip had varying opinions on her lifestyle.

Boazman begins her video recording her and her family outside at night in what appears to be their home's patio area. In the video's text overlay, she indicates that the clip is going to highlight what their collective end-of-day routine looks like as an "owl family."

Furthermore, she indicates that her kids don't follow a "set bedtime," and she asks in the video's caption if others have a similarly structured, or lack thereof, way of gradually getting to sleep.

Once inside the house, Boazman can be seen talking to a young boy who immediately starts to whine and cry with his back up against a counter, and he then collapses to the ground. She indicates that this took place at 8:45 p.m. after the family came back to the house following an evening walk.

In another portion of the video at 8:53 p.m., dad has returned home from playing basketball, shirtless. Then, at 8:55 p.m. Boazman is shown preparing for dinner.

Her young daughter helps by grabbing two eggs from the refrigerator. "Here, can I crack them now?" she asks before the clip cuts to dad, standing in the kitchen with a shirt on now.

Boazman shares what she and her family are about to eat in another on-screen caption: fried eggs and scrambled eggs with rice. With this information displayed on the screen, she can be heard taking requests from her other family members as to how they want their eggs cooked.

Her one enthusiastic daughter wants to crack her own egg into a bowl to get it scrambled while Boazman monitors her. "That was pretty aggressive," she tells the young girl who smacks the egg on the side of the kitchenware and then allows the contents of the egg to fall into the bowl.

One of the eggs ends up falling on the floor; however, Boazman writes that this egg is going to indeed be used as part of the young girl's meal. Ultimately, they were able to get eight total eggs into the bowl before beginning to stir the yolks and whites altogether.

Afterwards, the clip then cuts to Boazman's older daughter speaking to the younger one, instructing her on how to prepare her eggs the way she likes.

Following this, Boazman records herself cleaning up her bedroom, which has several pairs of shoes lying around the floor. As she does so, the sound of her children talking can be heard in the background.

At around 9:28 p.m., the family can be seen standing around the kitchen counter and getting their grub on, including their young son, who sits shirtless with a bowl of eggs and rice in front of him.

He tosses his arms up into the air, speaking happily, before the TikTok cuts to Mom and Dad working together to clean up after the meal.

Boazman rinses out some of the dishes and preps them to be placed inside of the dishwasher. Dad embraces her from behind and kisses her on the cheek and then Boazman loads up the dishwasher.

Next, her clip cuts to them working around the kitchen for further cleaning while dad takes what looks like a Swiffer to mop up the floor.

Then, Dad and Mom have some time together at the kitchen counter. He shows her some basketball highlights on his phone as the two playfully rib each other.

Following this, their two daughters can be seen sitting on the couch while they have some tablet time. She wraps their hair so they can have curls in the morning while they do so.

Then, Boazman gets a bath ready for herself, and once the bathroom is freed up, her daughters also get themselves cleaned. They brush their teeth, and the three of them pile into a bed together. Boazman thanks Jesus aloud with her children in bed, and by 12:18 a.m., it looks like they're all sound asleep.

At this point in the clip, she sneaks out of the room so she can go spend some time with her husband. He is sitting at the kitchen counter perusing his phone while she preens his face. She gives him a big hug, and he puts his phone down and reciprocates her hug. Then, the two walk out of the kitchen and head to bed at 12:55 a.m.

Several folks who replied to her video stated that they, too, don't impose strict bedtimes for their kids. One commenter said they would implement a similar bedtime routine if their children were homeschooled.

But since they aren't, they said they need to follow a more structured format for their day.

Someone else said that as a single parent they needed to adhere to this more free-flowing sleeptime structure out of necessity. "As a single mom, our routine looked like this for a while and you know what... you gotta do what works," they penned.

Another said that because they homeschool their children, they follow this exact same routine. "Why I homeschool…we get to decide our schedule and our lifestyle. We are night owls too," they penned.

But there were those who said that this lifestyle seemed like anarchy. "This is chaotic. I can’t imagine growing up in this chaos," they remarked.

Others didn't seem to be too miffed by Boazman's family's routine, ultimately chalking it up to different strokes for different folks.

"Everyone is wired differently. My family is the same way. We are more productive and function better at night. We also work night shifts," they penned.