<p>On average I get 6.5 hours of sleep a night during weekdays and 8 hours of sleep a night during weekends.</p>
<p>My S’s are out of h.s. now but when they were here, they rarely got 8 hrs. of sleep, more like 6.5 or 7 during the week…more on the weekends.</p>
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<p>Ditto, except instead of a sport I have marching band and other ECs, as well as my sisters’ ECs. </p>
<p>6 hours during the week is find, as long as I can sneak in a nap once in a while.</p>
<p>I am seeing a lot of sweeping generalizations here on this thread, and I think they are not helpful. I think every individual is different in terms of sleep requirements. </p>
<p>My D goes to sleep around 1-2 am if she doesn’t have too much homework and around 2-3 am if she has a lot of homework. Wake up time is around 7 am on schooldays, so she gets 4-6 hrs on school nights. On weekends she might sleep until 10-11am, getting around 8-10 hrs. She seems to be doing fine. </p>
<p>Even as a baby she slept a lot less than others. Certainly less than what all the books tell you babies sleep.</p>
<p>v-parent: actually, I’ve been rather impressed that there is less back/forth and more just statement of ‘how much’ which is what I was interested in hearing. Your D sounds way out on the bell curve, but if she’s thriving, good for her.</p>
<p>I agree that each person is different and I’ve always envied those who could get by with less (esp when I was a resident working >100 hr/week back in the day). I am curious to know just how can you tell when a student is getting enough, given the natural interpersonal variation. I don’t want to get after my son to ‘get to bed’ but on the other hand, his biorhythm would keep him up until well after midnight and sleep till noon, and that does not mesh well with the external constraints of his school schedule.</p>
<p>I can just tell. Circles under the eyes, napping in the afternoon. </p>
<p>Right now my 17yo is snoring in my bed. What a fun Saturday night! He usually gets to sleep late on Saturday morning, but he didn’t today because he wanted to go to an event at school this morning at 8:30. He was up late for the football game last night, so he didn’t get the usual 10 hours on Friday night.</p>
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<p>I agree. I went for years pulling all nighters, etc. (both in college and in my work) and I can truly say in hindsight that wasn’t a good thing.
D had sleeping issues and now takes melatonin. She practices excellent sleep hygiene, which means she is off the computer / electronics at a certain time, and generally is in bed by 10, asleep by 10:30. She gets up at 6 for school. S doesn’t have sleep issues but is generally the same. I recognize that there may have to be occasional circumstances where they have to crank for school and stay up later, but I don’t want it to be a habit, I don’t think it’s a healthy way to live, and frankly, I don’t want them to turn into the kind of people who are just always so go-go-go that they don’t have time to just hang with the family and be. We think family dinners are very important and make every effort to have them. Frankly, some of the schedules of the “super kids” are horribly unappealing to me. If that’s what it takes to be top 20? Well, then screw top 20. </p>
<p>It’s already completely ridiculous that D’s varsity tennis means that she’s gone from 6:45 am to 5 pm on a Saturday. What a stupid waste of time that they can’t figure out how to get it all done in the morning so they are free by noon. She can try to squeeze in homework, but her coach (ironically also her AP chem teacher) dissuades it. Yeah, student-athlete my ***.</p>
<p>“Some people may thrive on the brink of burn-out, but I won’t let my kids find out if they’re one of them.” </p>
<p>While I agree in some ways, at some point they’re going to need to figure out if they can thrive on the brink of burn-out – isn’t HS the safest time to do that? At most they’ll learn that they pushed too hard and should have had one less AP class or one less EC because they needed more sleep. It’s better to learn that while you’re still living at home with your parents – not in a college dorm, in grad school or on the first job. And while you may not want them to have the types of lives or careers where they are always on the go – for a good percentage of students here, it’s likely that they will. Students like your kids tend to go into professions like medicine, law, i-banking – careers that are notorious for their hours, especially in the early stages. It’s better to know your limits in advance before you sign up for a career that requires 60+ hour weeks for years.</p>
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<p>Ouch. Call me unethical, but I don’t care to remember what happened in For Whom the Bell Tolls. I have no interest in it. Nor do I really care about the upper levels of calculus.</p>
<p>I have to agree with zapakovex, although I’d go a little further. Two years ago my class spent two weeks learning how to take the derivative. By the second assignment, my friend and I had gotten the concept. So the four pages of homework we got every night? We split it. Yup. I CHEATED. And guess what? I don’t regret it at all. I don’t feel like a failure, if I get karma for saving myself and my friend two hours’ of time (times eight days), and I can still take the derivative like a pro.</p>
<p>Then again, I’ve never paid much attention to the “rules”.</p>
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<p>I don’t think that skipping out on some calculus homework or foregoing that extra practice is so “lazy” that I’m going to end up with “some no opportunity job tomorrow”. And pushing off work or ECs for sleep isn’t lazy - it’s a necessary human function. If you’re pushing them off for that twelfth hour of sleep every night, then maybe, but putting something off or dropping it altogether to get 7-9 hours is not lazy. That’s like saying it was lazy to take that half an hour to eat dinner because you didn’t finish your homework.</p>
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<p>“Supposed to”? Says who? I prefer a little of each at each point on my life. I’m not working my butt off my entire life for a few years of retirement. I intend to enjoy every one of those years. And if that means not working as hard, so be it! I’ll take an 85 over a 95.</p>
<p>As for the thread, I get 8-10 hours of sleep. That means eight to nine hours a night and a quick nap in the afternoon five or six times a week. I am not a parent but a student. However, keep in mind that I take numerous decongestants, so that’s where my nap comes from - decongestants knock me out, so a nap is usually necessary just to function. I go to school online, so I don’t really have “homework” just class time (but since I don’t have any “padding” required classes / transition time / wasted time, I can get a LOT done). My schedule usually looks like this:</p>
<p>Monday, school 8-5
Tuesday, school 8-5, volunteer 5-9
Wednesday, school 8-5, work 5-9
Thursday, school 8-5
Friday, school 8-11:30, work 1-6:30, volunteer for a few hours if I can
Saturday work 9-3:30
Sunday volunteer 8-6</p>
<p>So I usually get 45 (an hour of my evenings is usually work I didn’t get done before dinner) hours a week of school, fifteen to twenty hours of volunteer time, and fifteen hours of work. I only have one EC but it adds up to that fifteen to twenty hours anyways. So I basically have off from 6-10 every night - I spend it reading, online, studying, supplementing my classes, preparing for the next day, wasting time, hanging out, COLLEGE APPLICATIONS, etc. It’s probably split equally duty/play. I go to bed between 10 and 11 and get up at 7:00 or 7:30. I feel like I have a lot of extra time, but losing that huge and unnecessary chunk of school day makes a big difference.</p>