It's also a common communications failure, in that you'll do far better not just with children, but with adults to, if you provide a reason instead of assuming

It's also a common communications failure, in that you'll do far better not just with children, but with adults to, if you provide a reason instead of assuming that the other party know why you're making the request you're making. Instead you're inviting pattern matching - the child will have been told to go to bed because it is late, so it's a natural statement to make if you don't understand why the parent is stating it. Explain the steps, and the consequence of failure in a way that the child can relate to, and you're likely to get a very different reaction("come home, because it's late and you need to go to bed so you're not too tired to play tomorrow"). But really, adding a "because ..." tends to improve compliance even when the reasoning isn't very sound, and even with adults. It's scarily effective as long as the ask isn't too great.