How did your family adjust to someone in the household having to work 3rd shift?

I essentially work 3rd shift, and it’s actually worked out pretty well for us. Even when all three of my kids are here, I can sleep during the day. I’m a pretty sound sleeper in the first place, though. Some things that help: white noise in the sleeper’s bedroom, darkness (sleep mask or blackout curtains?), and distance (my bedroom is upstairs, and the kids are generally downstairs while they’re awake). If he’s not a sound sleeper and/or you don’t have the distance thing going for you, maybe earplugs would help, too.

Since I started working at night, a lot of people have asked me how that works out with my husband. Surprisingly, it’s not all that different than if we both worked during the day. I’m awake when he comes home from work, and usually awake when he leaves in the morning. While he’s at work, I’m sleeping. We spend our early evenings together, I ‘tuck him in’ when he goes to bed (I usually scratch his back lightly until he goes to sleep), and then I ‘go’ to work (I don’t really go anywhere, since I work from home).

All of that said, it does have its drawbacks. I’m nocturnal by nature, but I know a lot of people aren’t, and they have a really hard time adjusting to working nights. Weekend daytime family stuff poses a problem. In order to really adjust, he’ll have to stick to the weird sleep schedule even on his off days. If I really want or have to do something during the day, I get far less sleep than I should.

Best of luck to you guys!

I don’t have any kids, but my partner and I have to work out timing differently on the occasions I work third (like tonight). For instance, tomorrow I’m waking her up when I go to sleep. She’ll return the favor on Monday by waking me when she goes to work in the afternoon, so I get sleep but not so much I won’t be tired enough to fall asleep sometime on Monday night.

When I did the third shifts while living with my parents and one of my brothers, it worked out that my parents would be gone during the day, and my brother was mostly nocturnal too. He’d sometimes forget not to play his guitar witht he volume up, but luckily I’m a heavy sleeper.

On a personal level, I learned to sleep in front of large windows if I was doing third shifts often, because I realized I was becoming vitamin D deficient. Enough non-nocturnal people in our society have that deficiency, I might as well not make it worse.

Do you sleep early morning or afternoon? Jon finds it hard to fall asleep as soon as he gets home at 6am. I can understand that. Some people need time to unwind before they go to sleep.

What works best for you?

I work 12 hour shifts, 8pm to 8am. I found that sleeping right away and waking around 4 or 5 gives me the best sleep. Of course, I don’t have kids, but my wife definitely has to pick-up my slack with cleaning and caring for the animals.

Sleeping in the morning or around 14–15 gives you a lot. Though one needs some peace and quiet. I always enjoyed working in the night [ dunno why ].
Some say it’s because of the hour you were born. Some give the best of their abilities in the morning, some in the afternoon, some in the night etc.

In any case the family will adjust after a while though you guys need to spend some family time together too.

I can’t sleep right after work, either. I need some down time first. I generally go to sleep somewhere between 7:30AM & 10AM.

I don’t have children, but I know many people who work or have worked third shift. Many of them slept a little bit in shifts also. They were willing to nap to catch up on sleep, to be awake at the times their children first got home from school, or some other part of a routine that they wanted to participate in. They also slept more hours on days off to catch up. Honestly, I think most Americans don’t get enough sleep and should be willing to nap and sleep longer hours on days off anyway. I have one friend who has a teen son, so she is at work mostly while he sleeps, gets home, sees him off to school, and then goes to sleep. She wakes when he gets home more or less. But, she only works 3 days a week 12 hour shifts

Regarding something someone said above, if you are not naturally nocturnal, I think third shift can be very difficult, not impossible, but difficult.

Some communities there is a lot of third shift, and I think that makes it easier. When I lived in MI, there was tons of stores open 24 hours, auto workers and other business had three shifts, so you could easily do grocery shopping and other thing and not be the only one in the store, and not have a difficult time adjusting your schedule. I think MI was open all night more than cities like NY.

We don’t have children but my husband did work 3rd shift for awhile.
When he would get home,I would be gone at work so noise wasn’t an issue.
I still hated it.I wanted him in bed with me at night.
He eventually got off of that shift.

For a short while, my guardian worked 3rd shift, and it was just us two in the house, as her son had been gone for some time by then. I was a teen, and it was as if we had separate lives.

By the time I’d get home from school/afternoon job/extracurricular activity, she was on her way to work and she didn’t get home until after I’d left for school the next morning. Also, on weekends, she was too tired to do anything except go to church on Sunday because she was a morning person normally.

It made her a lot grumpier than usual.

My mom worked third shift when I was very little. (ages 2 to 4) There were three out of five of us home at the time and my middle sister was 18 and working second shift at the time. She would get home from her job at 11:30PM or midnight, depending on the weather. She would get up at 6AM to make breakfast for my dad, then get our other sister off to school and I got up around 7AM. My mom got home around 7:30AM and would head to bed by 8AM. She would sleep until 2:00 or 2:30PM as my sister had to leave for work by 2:30. She would start dinner, etc., and sometimes take a nap from 9PM to 10PM, depending on whether she was tired. Luckily, my mom could sleep through anything but a sick child, so no amount of noise or light bothered her.

Could Jon go to bed around 7 or 7:30? Maybe a little gentle yoga would help him unwind before bed. I’m not touting this product, but something like it might help. What time does he need to get up to be to work on time?

Being a police officer for 44 years, I have worked ever shift known to man.

At first, I had the worlds worst time attempting to sleep in the daytime. In my subconscious, I knew the world outside was alive and here I am, trying to go to sleep, with so many things I needed to do. Sleep was not a priority for me. The lack of sleep finally caught up with me. I was running on a two cylinder engine in my body. Bless my wife. One day, she came home with a pair of ear mufflers, black eye patches and a bottle of anithistimine. It was time for her hubby to go to dreamland. It took about three days before I became accustomed to a different sleep pattern. The good part is that it did work. I also like the idea of my wife placing a fan close to the bed. The cool, blowing air also aided in my daytime sleeping.

You cannot keep children from being normal. Normal is laughing, playing, being loud and just plain children. You will have to approach this situation from a different angle.

Try my plan and see if it will work for your hubby. Good luck. john

Oh, I wanted to mention, although you have probably already figured this out, that you may need to switch around meals and caffeinated beverages. If he comes home and has breakfast and morning coffee, it might be a little tougher to go to sleep, unless he has always been one to drink caffiene, even before sleep at night, and had no trouble. Many people who work third shift abuse/use caffeine, consuming more during their shift than they would if they worked during the day.

If it were me I would not worry at all about eating “breakfast food” at breakfast time. I don’t now anyway.

As someone who has worked a lot of 2nd shift, some 3rd shift, a couple of years of Southern Swing, and a few years of whatever hours the Navy demanded of their Engineering department (which sometimes involved working between 20 and 70 hour days) I have to say that it really is hard to adjust, especially if the person working those shifts never developed the same knack as most military guys of being able to cat-nap or to sleep anywhere, anytime.

My wife adjusted somewhat to my odd hours, but the simple truth is that kids will be kids, and you can’t control that, at least not in any way that wouldn’t get CPS called in. They tend to frown on the use of duct tape. As a result, there really isn’t much that can be done; no matter how well you and your spouse adjust, the ankle-biters are still going to run around screeching regardless.

My fiancee and I are both in the same business where we never have the same days off much less have them at the same time. We both work over 60hrs a week and when his kids are over then they just know to keep it down a bit because someone is sleeping. They are used to there always being an eye on the time for one or both of us to run out the door to work.

Get your Mr. some good squishy reusable ear plugs, get some blackout curtains and keep the room he sleeps in cooled, maybe add in a little grey noise from a computer motor or radio turned down low.

@tedibear What time does he need to get up to be to work on time?

Jon needs to be at work by 10pm. Luckily his work is only 4 miles from our home, so he plans to wake up at 9pm, an hour before he needs to be there. He’s trying to keep the same schedule he had when he worked 1st shift. Wake up, go to work, come home and relax for a few hours before bedtime. We have an air conditioner and room darkening curtains in the bedroom for him. This has helped quite a bit! He said he didn’t hear any noise yesterday afternoon when he slept and I worried that the kids and dogs were being too loud.

Thanks everyone for answering! Jon worked 3rd shift when we first married and had two toddlers. I don’t know how I did it then, but that was so long ago. We’ll adjust. The best thing about this new job is Jon only having to travel a few miles (he was traveling 55 miles one way before this) and he finally has health benefits. We’ll make it work. =)

@jonsblond – It sounds like you both have a plan. I hope everything works out for the best!

Jon doesn’t need to travel 100 miles a day now, which is nice, but we rarely have time to spend with each other. We just can’t win. :(

This 3rd shift is hard.