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In this age of Gentle Parenting, parents often shy away from insisting that their children go to bed.

Parents need to be firm about bedtime.

Providing the structure of a particular bedtime and bedtime ritual is helpful for children.

In many, if not most, American homes, bedtime is a mess right now. Many children won't go to sleep without a parent in the room, call for their parents a million times, get out of bed over and over, come to sleep in their parents' bed in the middle of the night, or start out there and never leave. Parents are exhausted, and they get little or no evening time to themselves.

Why is this, and what can we do about it? Well, there is obviously not one answer that fits every family and every situation, but one thing has occurred to me. And that is, that in this age of Gentle Parenting, parents are often shying away from insisting that their children go to bed and stay in bed. They are often having trouble being firm about this; in other words, they are having trouble not being nice or gentle. They are having trouble raising their voices, if needed, to make sure their child knows it is time to go to sleep, and this is non-negotiable.

While parents may not say they ascribe to Gentle Parenting, it is part of the zeitgeist nonetheless. It is everywhere. And it has gone out of style to insist that children do certain things in a certain........

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