The teen sleep crisis: Early school start times are terrible for our kids' health

[marmar]

The teen sleep crisis: Early school start times are terrible for our kids' health
Lack of sleep for teens is connected to higher risk of suicide and higher likelihood of substance use

By GAIL CORNWALL
PUBLISHED JUNE 12, 2022 10:00AM


(Salon) My first encounter with Lisa Lewis was over email, when, in 2017, she reached out about an activist drive to let teenagers sleep.

"I'm excited to let you know about a recently introduced state bill about healthy school start times in California, which would require public middle and high schools to start at 8:30 a.m. or later!" her note read.

School start times may not seem like a political issue apt to mobilize parents, yet every day, for years, they see the effect of school schedules on their children. Two years earlier, Lewis had been no chipper activist — just a mom whose eighth grader started school at 8:45 AM. A year later, as a ninth-grader, her son's school started at 7:30.

"I was driving him to school, and I could just look over and see he was barely awake. And then every afternoon he'd come home, and more often than not, he'd take a nap." The journalist in her took over. After doing some digging, she was alarmed at what she found. "What I quickly realized was this was not (a) a new issue or (b) unique to our community," Lewis told me. "There's a huge body of research about teen sleep."

....(snip)....

You write that, "School start times can change whereas biology can't." I felt that viscerally, since my daughter will be 13 soon, and every night at 9:00 she gets a second wind and wants to engage right when I'm ready to crash.

That tracks. And it's because their body clock shifts at puberty, and they're not ready to go to sleep as early as they used to be, and they're also not ready to wake as early. Melatonin is being released on a later schedule, and melatonin is what primes us to feel sleepy. Generally speaking, teens aren't ready to sleep until closer to 11:00 p.m. And then if you just do the simple math, they are supposed to be getting 8-10 hours every night, so having to be at their desks at 7 or 7:30 a.m. makes that impossible. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/06/12/the-teen-sleep-crisis-early-school-start-times-are-terrible-for-our-kids-health/

[Guilded Lilly]

1. Our middle (Jr. High) schools were on a later start pattern...

When I was a kid, largely because our district was so big they needed to juggle our available school busses to accommodate the massive number of students.

They found that the performance level numbers
of the kids starting a bit later improved so instead of spending more $ on more busses, they kept the later start time. It only came down to a thirty-ish minute difference but certainly seemed to benefit all involved.

(The district eventually built an intermediate high school so the breakdown was Elementary School included 1-5 grades. Middle School was 6-8. Intermediate High School was 9-10 and High School 11-12.)

[jimfields33]

2. All 13 years, I started at 8:10.

Perfect time. Let’s do it schools.

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

3. So take away the Blue screen - same problem many adults

have only our culture doesnt fret about adult mental health so much.

[scarletlib]

4. Not really.

I was in high school long before computers or blue screens. Pretty much a straight A student. Had to be out on the road by 6:30 to catch the bus. I went to bed at 10:00. Don’t remember if I fell asleep right away. What I do remember is being sleepy and tired the first 2 hours or so after getting to school.

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

5. Im that way as an adult - if it wasnt for coffee I dont think I could hold a job or

function at all LOL. As a young adult I always stayed up late, but getting up later didnt really help. I would just wake up later and later until I was totally turned around. So that's why Im just not getting this logic of indulging a young person's staying up/waking up later.

[GenThePerservering]

6. That may be your individual time clock

I have a 25-26 hour clock and have to fight to stay on a schedule (I actually have no real sleep rhythm, it has to be artificially imposed) or I advance forward an hour, or two hours or whatever, every day. And would get totally turned around, also. There are a fair number of us around. I could flip from day to night and was a fabulous shift worker and rarely got jet lag. But there are definitely downsides - I was an awful student and slept at the back of the class most mornings.

Most people who have a 24-hour clock, at the teen years start struggling with early start times - it's just biology. My feeling is that high schoolers should just start at 8:30 and have a decent night's sleep. And get the blue screens out of their danged faces two hours before bed if the parents have to lock them in a cupboard.