Why can't you take your kid to the playground after dark? In December we get sunrise at 8 but it's not light until 9 or so. Sunset is at 15 but it's quite dark at 14 already. Kids are happily playing with their parents in the snow no matter how dark it is, you can't stay indoors just because you have 5-6 hours of daylight. You just get a flashlight for your head and can play or go skiing in the forest.
Mostly it is just that there are no other kids to play with: yes, we might do it, but if we are the only ones it isn't great for him. But the real big problem is that sunshine in a Seattle winter is a precious commodity: 7/10 even with daylight we wouldn't get to the park because of rain, or its just not pleasant out. The problem with standard time is that 7/10 turns into not going 10/10, it wastes the precious sunlight we do have.
For us that hour does no difference at all, it's still dark when going to school/work and it's dark again when coming home. We have 4 hours and 20 minutes of daylight on the worst days, Seattle seems to have about 8 hours so there the DST hour actually does a difference I guess.
But one hour less in the night has been shown to give a higher death rate that week every year so it's been discussed to get rid of it here too.
