Transplanting a Seattleite

My bedtime was 7:30 up through second or third grade, and I thought that was insanely early. But my son's bedtime is only 8:00 to 8:30 (he's ten, and an early riser by nature, as is my husband), and that seems pretty much exactly right: if he has to stay up much past that, he generally *wants* to go to bed. I think he'll adapt to the far-too-early schedule for middle school next year a lot more easily than my daughters did.

I think you are overreacting, FWIW, but I must say you have the best excuse for overreacting I've ever heard. I guess I would say that precise *schedules* can be suboptimal for kids, but *routines* are often quite valuable. In other words, all the elements of a schedule (planning, order of events, etc.) *except* precise time requirements.