<p>DS usually gets <8 hrs sleep/night. Up at 6 am for 7 am school start (don't ask), and rarely in bed by 10pm. Although he seems OK, other than being tired in the mornings, doesn't seem like enough to me. Gets bit more on weekends, but not alot more. How about yours?</p>
<p>That’s PLENTY, trust me. On school days I am lucky to get 6 hours, and I don’t really mess around… I spend my time wisely. It actually seems like too much, I’d like to know how he does it!</p>
<p>Ds1 gets 7-8 hours; ds2 gets 8-9. We simply don’t allow the 3-4 hours sleep that lots of kids seem to operate on.</p>
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A lot of the time it is impossible to get more than that. While it should not be a general practice, it will happen some times. Regardless, even on a regular basis, I barely get more six hours.</p>
<p>Our high school daughter gets about 8 or 9 hours sleep on week nights, and 10 or 11 on weekends.</p>
<p>Teens need 9 hours or more of sleep every night. The great tragedy is that we are raising a generation of kids who are compromising their physical and mental health and development because early school start times make it impossible for them to get the sleep they need. It’s a matter of the shift to later sleep / wake patterns that marks adolescence, combined with the academic and extra-curricular demands.</p>
<p>We don’t really have much of a choice. I do my homework quickly, not more than needed (for a high A if graded), and do ECs well but efficiently. It just doesn’t seem to be possible. The schools can’t really do much either, it just is… nothing can be done, unfortunately…</p>
<p>Youngest D is getting up at 5:30 for high school, so she rarely gets a full 8 hours during the week. S gets up at 6:30, but he goes to bed later, so he also gets about 7.5 hours. Both sleep more on weekends, but I am hoping D cuts back her morning routine to get more sleep. I am concerned about her becoming more susceptible to illness if she is worn down.</p>
<p>PrincipalV, every other poster on here demonstrates that it can be done. :)</p>
<p>Get up: 5:00 (swimming)
School: 8:15 (shower in the middle)
End: 3:45
After School Activity/Swimming: 5:45
Drive home: 6:15
Homework and things from other clubs (Habitat for Humanity, MUN, Math Team, etc.): 10:30 to 11:00</p>
<p>Tell me how I can do it any other way… I am really open to suggestions… :)</p>
<p>I am a teenager, I do not get 9 hours of sleep a night, I have not died. Obviously teenagers do not need 9 hours of sleep. In the same way that people don’t need to have the exact number of servings of each food group in the food pyramid every day, in the same way that we don’t need 100% of every vitamin every day, in the same way that we don’t need to exercise for exactly how much people say is the correct amount, and in the same way that we don’t need to avoid all chemicals, or we’ll die if we don’t eat only raw and organic foods that we cook ourselves, or any of that other ********.</p>
<p>It’s just a pet peeve of mine that people act as if anything other than “optimal” is a failure, that everyone is the same and needs exactly the same thing, or that whatever some study says is divine law and any opposition to it is deadly. </p>
<p>Not that I’d even say 9 hours a sleep optimal, if an extra few hours asleep was actually more useful to someone than that extra few hours awake that most people enjoy, people would sleep more, they don’t. I haven’t taken an economics class but it seems to me that by whatever I learned in my Civics class, if the extra hours of sleep would bring more productivity than the extra hours awake, people would spend those extra hours asleep.</p>
<p>You run a deficit during the week, then you sleep all you want on the weekend. Assuming you’re getting a minimum of like 6 hours, this works out just fine.</p>
<p>I hate when kids complain about how much time they spend on homework. So many whine about how they get like 8 hours of it a day.</p>
<p>A) Turn off the TV.
B) Stop checking facebook after every other question.</p>
<p>…and, as lazy as it seems…</p>
<p>C) Learn what’s important and excel with the bare minimum.</p>
<p>I learned pretty quickly that the difference between a 95 and a 100 was not enough to justify the hours upon hours of extra work that perfection requires. As a result, I excelled in school AND had a blast. Wake up, when you get to the real world, people only care about results, and every other person heading to the top is nothing but a skilled BS artist. Join their ranks, then beat them at their own game, it’s the best feeling on earth.</p>
<p>Before you flame me, realize that I’m not condoning cheating or plagiarism. I’m saying that you should live your life based on the fundamental rule of economics: the law of diminishing marginal returns. If it takes you 1 hour to get 95% of the material for a test down, then it takes you another 5 hours to get the remaining 5% down, maybe you should reconsider studying for 6 hours. If reading a novel cover to cover gets you 100% on the test and reading the sparknotes gets you a 98%, maybe, just maybe, you can live with a 98% and save yourself hours and hours of reading. Don’t tell me it doesn’t work, because I graduated HS with an overall average of 96 with 10 APs.</p>
<p>I doubt that many high school students get “enough” sleep. But here is D’s schedule:
Get up between 5:45 and 6:00
School starts at 7:30, except for when there is an NHS meeting at 7:00
School until 2:30
Sports (in season) until between 6 and 8, depending on practice and travel schedule
Work on weekends year-round and some week days when no sports
Shower
Eat
Practice musical instrument
Do homework for all honors and AP classes
Relax by talking to friends, playing with dog, or watching TV
Lucky to get into bed by 12 or 1.</p>
<p>I’m with PrincipalV. If there is a better way to do it, please tell me. D wants to do all of these things. Colleges clearly encourage this sort of schedule too because everybody wants to have participated in rigorous course work and extracurricular activities. But as a parent, I am well aware that she does not get enough sleep. Maybe the fact that I find her sleeping while sitting in an upright position may be a clue. :D</p>
<p>DS gets about 7-8 hours on a school night and 10-12 on weekends. Unfortunately, no one in our family can live on little sleep. My H and I both carry the dominant sleeping gene that both kids inherited!</p>
<p>PrincipalIV, I have no advice for you, only understanding and empathy! My daughter gets 6 hours of sleep a night, too, and like you, she doesn’t mess around, but follows a consistent and relatively normal schedule of classes, ECs, work, homework, bed. Her day starts at 7:00 am and ends at 1:00 am. She does sleep a lot on the weekends, however. I’m always amazed that she can do that–my own body clock wakes me up at the same time every morning, regardless of the day of the week.</p>
<p>Ditto to the diminishing returns comment by zapakovex.</p>
<p>OP - why is your daughter working on weekends? What about conference and study periods in school? Is she using those periods to do her homework is she socializing. Both of our kids had min 15 hrs/week EC year round, not just during a particular season. They cut out sleep overs on weekends and hanging out at a mall with girlfriends. They don’t work or join any ECs to just put on a resume. They focus on one or two clubs through high school. Like previous poster, they do enough to get the As, but never over kill.</p>
<p>In my line of work, people have tendency to work very long hours, and it’s almost a badge honor to say they work 60 or 80 hours a week, or they pulled an all nighter. I have always managed my workload - I told people when I couldn’t take on certain assignment, but I always did an excellent job whenever I worked on anything. I told people when I needed time with my family, and not be afraid of losing my job. Many of my colleagues have burned out or being let go. I still like my job (most of the time) after 25 years.</p>
<p>It is important for our kids to learn to manage their time early on and when to say no. You can’t have it all. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. I don’t care what anyone says, I believe getting min 8 hours of sleep a night is very important for high school and college students.</p>
<p>I get 6-7 hours on school nights. I’m awake at 5:30, so I usually try to be in bed by 10 and asleep by 10:30 to get the full 7 hours, but sometimes that just isn’t possible. Especially in the winter when I’m in theatre and only get home at 8.
I usually end up getting 10 hours of sleep on the weekends, though. And 6.5 hours on school nights really isn’t that bad. I can’t function on less than 4, and I’ve never pulled an all-nighter, unlike most of the kids I go to school with.</p>
<p>QK, no one talked about death or failure.</p>
<p>PV, I think part of the key is knowing what’s good enough. My kids aren’t getting 100s on everything all the time. They aren’t president in every club but play key roles in a couple. They both are athletes. I’m not sure how they do it all and still get a decent amount of sleep. They are good at time mgmt. They do their homework at the dining room table, unplugged, so they aren’t texting, IM’ing, playing Mafia Wars (though ds1 does find plenty of time for that, too!). Maybe one key is that both spend a lot of time on homework on weekends, sometimes working days ahead just so that the week won’t be so stressful.</p>
<p>We’ve just always set a firm deadline (yielding when necessary) so they know they don’t have time to mess around if they’re going to get it all done.</p>
<p>Youdon’tsay: I try to, I really do. I can’t, though, I just like to do things and to them well. All things concerned, for me, 6 hours isn’t that bad. Once I get to saturday night I can crash and it’ll all be good… :)</p>
<p>
You really must have your head stuck up your ass. The grade you get in school matters only insofar as to the results you can output. I am not gonna lie, SparkNotes have saved me, but relying on them solely is not right. I don’t remember anything from books I SparkNoted. </p>
<p>The sad truth is that competition gets tighter and tighter, regardless of diminishing returns, and more and more people want the prize. It’s the people who put in that extra time for the small return that benefit in the end. </p>
<p>No, I don’t check facebook every 1min. No, I don’t watch TV (maybe 1-2 hrs a week on DVR on a weekend)…</p>
<p>You can’t have it all and, to be honest, I’d much rather be sleeping savvy when I am thirty in a good job than be sitting on my ass sleeping today when I may end up in some no opportunity job tomorrow because I was too lazy.</p>
<p>However you put it, pushing off work or ECs for sleep IS being lazy. IF people don’t want to do more ECs then it is different, but saying you want to do it and then saying “but I don’t have the time” is no excuse. You have time for what you want, trust me.</p>
<p>Saturdays are really busy too, with games/friends and all, but Sundays are perfect for relaxing, not sleeping all day, but having a good and easy day. </p>
<p>I go for about 48 hours of sleep each week, which I find good enough. Long weekends and breaks give me resting periods. </p>
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The only thing is, you’re supposed to end your life in ease but work your butt off in the start. That doesn’t really work in running.</p>