<p>I really hope you’re not trying to refute studies with anecdotal evidence. The delayed sleep cycle in adolescents is an average - it doesn’t preclude some people deviating from it.</p>
<p>The AAP declared that my current 20 year old had to sleep on her stomach to guard against crib death. They also declared that my current 16 year old had to sleep on his back to prevent crib death. Keep this in mind when you read the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics.</p>
<p>6:11 here and school starts in less than 20 minutes . . . welcome to September! I didn’t have to be in early today so I am being a nice mommy and supplying a ride. Otherwise kid would already be sprinting for the city bus.</p>
<p>
In my area, traffic is absolutely hellacious and the high schools aren’t neighborhood schools, they take in fairly large geographic areas.</p>
<p>Where I live, school started a month ago!!</p>
<p>Tomorrow is the first day here. I swore this year that I was going to make my son get up earlier every day so he would be prepared for the actual start of classes next Monday, but I didn’t. Not even once. It isn’t going to be pretty, but he will adjust. I hope.</p>
<p>“I really hope you’re not trying to refute studies with anecdotal evidence.” No, I’m trying to refute the sweeping all inclusive generalization with counterexamples. I understand the changes in circadian rhythms but it is a gross overstatement and oversimplification to say that this makes it impossible for all teens to fall asleep before 11. </p>
<p>Kids live in different time zones and different latitudes. Do students in Alaska have trouble getting to sleep at 11 pm during the school year? Some of them may not see the sun at all as it’s only up while they are in school. What is magic about 11 pm? It’s a social construct. </p>
<p>Students can’t control when they have to get up for school, but a school that starts early will also end early and so they have as much time in their day as the students who start later and therefore must stay up later to finish their homework etc. It may be a little harder to get to bed sooner after sunset, but it is a gross exaggeration to say that students can’t do it. If students are willing to get up at a regular time, instead of messing up their circadian rhythms by sleeping half the day on Saturday, if they are willing to get off Facebook and shut off their phones at night, if they are willing to eat regular meals including breakfast, if they are willing to get a reasonable amount of daily exercise, if they are willing to stop drinking caffeine, I think you would find that the vast majority of them are not unable to fall asleep before 11 pm. </p>
<p>What we need is a study showing that students in Asia have later start times and get more sleep, and thus are producing more STEM majors.</p>
<p>More seriously, it seems to me that it is probably true that a later start time would be better, on average, for high school students, just as an afternoon nap would probably be better, on average, for most working adults. Many realities make these too difficult to establish broadly, however. So we have to adapt to less-than-ideal situations. Some people adapt better than others, which is why some of us can’t understand why this is a concern at all.</p>
<p>Of course not all teens. Have you heard of order of magnitude analysis?</p>
<p>The problem is daytime sleepiness caused by forcing teens to wake up too early. If busing is necessary, the problem is worse. If split schedules are necessary, the problem is worse. If the school cannot allow for students who do have a documented sleep issue to come in late every day, the problem is worse.</p>
<p>And you put out a bunch of stereotypes about teens which are not always the case.</p>
<p>Most people have circadian rhythms that run closer to 25 than 24 hours. So the natural tendency is to stay up later and later and to sleep later and later. The time of getting up, keeping a regular schedule, eating breakfast, eating meals at regular times, keeping a regular light cycle, all help reset the clock to 24 hours and keep us on track. </p>
<p>I was not thinking about stereotypical teen behavior when i made that list (other than the mention of Facebook in context of night time exposure to light). I was trying to remember all the factors that reset rhythms. It just so happens that stereotypical behavior of modern American teens does violate all those factors that help keep rhythms regular. But most or all of that behavior is under their personal control. </p>
<p>I agree that it’s harder to get to sleep earlier for teens but we are not talking about going to sleep before sunset. Families on early schedules most likely also eat dinner earlier. Really, the only difference between a family on an early schedule and one on a late schedule would be time of sunset and sunrise relative to their activities. Sure, I find it more difficult to get up before sunrise. But if getting up before sunrise is so debilitating for high school students to learn, then I think we’d see a clear gradient of achievement with high school students from southern states that get more sun in the morning handily outperforming students from the sun-deprived northern parts of the country. You be the judge.</p>
<p>I have friends who travel between 60 and 90 minutes (due to varying weather and traffic conditions) on the city bus to get across town to our magnet school… It’s nuts… </p>
<p>My twins went to different high schools on the opposite sides of town. It was at least a ninety minute trip each morning. Maybe more. </p>
<p>Here’s one of many articles about why teenagers should not sleep late on weekends. It throws off the circadian rhythm and makes it more difficult for them to wake up on school days.</p>
<p><a href=“Why “sleeping in” on weekends isn’t good for teens - Harvard Health”>http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-sleeping-in-on-weekends-isnt-good-for-teens-201301115763</a></p>
<p>Our children have to wake up by 5:30 a.m. to get on the bus. On weekends we make sure that they wake up between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. so as not to throw their sleep schedule off. It has worked well. (I haven’t had the heart to insist that they wake up at 5:30 on weekends!) They get more sleep because they don’t stay up late on weekends, which has made it much easier for them to wake up on Monday mornings.</p>
<p>I know this is an old thread but I can’t resist adding my two cents, mainly because I am frustrated with seeing comments about how it was back in the day and how lazy kids today are. As cliche as it sounds, times have changed. It is not reasonable to act like the way things were 50 years ago is equivalent to how it is today. The demands placed on students in high school are far different. You need several AP classes, a few extracurricular activities, volunteer hours, and preferably a sport or two on your college application to look competitive. And you are reminded of this every day at many public schools. Factor in a part-time job if your family is less well-off, at least a couple hours of homework (or more if you are taking advanced classes), whatever chores your parents have asked you to complete, and social interaction (even if this just means having dinner with the family instead of in front of an open history book), and you realize what the real problem is.</p>
<p>The real problem is the ridiculous amount of things teenagers are expected to participate in along with the ridiculous amount of pressure to get into a “good college”. Before you talk about social networks and laziness, stop. It is true that some teenagers have issues with this but even the teenagers who are really trying (such as myself) and spend every waking hour trying to get everything done, still don’t get it done, and still don’t get enough sleep. I know many students who wish they could exercise but school and work demands mean they often have to choose between that and sleep. Sleep always wins, but they still don’t get enough. </p>
<p>It is true that the idea that a later school start time is good for teenagers does NOT mean more hours in the day. It is likely that many teenagers will still be sleep-deprived just because of the time required of them for school, sports, work, and clubs. Personally, I am usually too exhausted from everything else to even check my social network most days, but I realize some kids would probably still stay up late checking their Twitter feed.</p>
<p>However, what the advocates for later start time are saying is that starting school later will make BETTER USE OF THE LIMITED TIME TEENAGERS HAVE. It is saying that maybe, if school started at 8:30 instead of 7:15, more students would be aware of the things taught in their first block instead of sitting there in a daze and having to spend a precious hour after school doing damage control, trying to understand the material they failed to grasp in class as a result of being overly sleepy. It is saying that teenagers might, with a later start time, have reduced risk of getting into a car crash since they are not working against their internal body clock to stay alert while driving to school. It is saying that maybe, if students did not have to get up until around 7:30, they would be more energetic while getting ready for the day and would not take quite as long getting ready in the morning. </p>
<p>I know this is long but I really feel like a lot of people are missing this extremely valid side of the issue. A later start time would make biological sense and would help teenagers use the limited time they have more effectively.</p>
<p><a href=“From Zzzz's To A's - Adolescents And Sleep | Inside The Teenage Brain | FRONTLINE | PBS”>http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/from/sleep.html</a>
<a href=“Teens Should Start School Later, Says Pediatric Group | Time”>http://time.com/3162265/school-should-start-later-so-teens-can-sleep-urge-doctors/</a></p>
<p>We moved the HS start time to 0800 as a way to facilitate tight budgets and what happened was that an “extra” class period immediately got inserted before school. Students use it to cram classes and activities they can’t get into the regular day.</p>
<p>The way I see it, later start times wouldn’t help, really … it would just shift the schedule later. Our HS starts at 7:30. My daughter gets up at about 6:20, gets ready, eats a quick breakfast and heads out the door to the bus at 6:50. School lets out at 2:10. She has xc or track practice after school until 5:00 p.m… She comes home, eats dinner, does homework, makes her lunch and gets her bags ready for the next day, and is usually in bed by 10 - 11 pm. If they shift the school day later, there is less time after school for students who want jobs to work, and less time for after school activities that don’t start to conflict with lack of daylight (for outside sports) and family schedules (as if that was ever really a consideration…
). Let’s say they shift it an hour later … the whole evening just shifts later. She’s a sophomore in all the top classes she can be in at this point. My son had the same schedule and was in all AP classes his Jr/Sr years … those years on occasion he was up later, but rarely until midnight. And FWIW, the student representatives on the council of PTAs in our county just voted on this very issue, because the county is investigating shifting the school start time to later in the day – the students themselves voted almost unanimously against it. </p>