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Let Teenagers Sleep In

nytimes.com

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Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#201

Post by rootusrootus »

emodendroket wrote: post #63
boomboomsubban wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Here's the elephant in the room. High schools start and end earlier with the idea that older kids can watch their siblings. I've always been under the impression that start times were staggered for transportation reasons, as you can't drop everyone off at the same time. My experiences are limited to small towns, so I could be way off, but the differences seemed too small for sibling care to be the motive

That means you have to do some kind of staggering. But the order is always older-younger, although younger kids are naturally awake earlier.

It makes sense for the order to be older-younger, because high school has a longer day than elementary school, so pushing their start time to after the elementary school will make it so the elementary kids are out at noon or just after and the high school kids won't be done until dinner time. Symmetrical makes it easier for everyone's schedule.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#202

Post by lamontcg »

dpatrick86 wrote: post #185
lamontcg wrote: post #154

I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager and probably had diagnosable delayed sleep phase disorder. Rules made by 55 year old early risers that only need 6 hours of sleep a night who have become school officials are just cruel and unusual punishment to a chunk of teenagers out there. In a better world there could be a class action lawsuit to make this stop--but its still considered okay to promote "early to be…

6:30AM is just some other city's 11:30AM... the difference in between is just light exposure, food consumption, and activity (the three big zeitgebers). Unless you think you'd never resynchronize after moving across the world, it's pretty obvious that your wake and sleep time would have to be a lot more malleable than you suggest.

I've skipped business trips to Europe and the East Coast before because jetlag is completely brutal for me.

And it takes all those tricks for me just to maintain a 24 hour sleep cycle. What I'd like to be able to do is what I did in college and shift my sleep schedule forward an hour or two every day. Instead I have a sleep mask, I start prepping for bed at least an hour early, I take melatonin, I make sure not to eat at night, and I lie down in bed with the sleep mask on for at least 20-30 minutes and listen to programs that help me to relax. Then it takes me 20-30 minutes after I really decide to go to sleep in order to go to sleep.

And right before bedtime is when I'm most alert. Even if I stay up all night, at about 9:30pm I won't be able to sleep.

What is really bad is when I'm seriously sleep depped and I get to sleep at say 7:30 or so, and I can easily wake up after 2-3 hours and then be stuck awake until >3am in the morning.

So I use every single trick in the book and then can just barely manage to stick to what the rest of society thinks is normal and its a constant fight.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#203

Post by pdpi »

dpatrick86 wrote: post #185
lamontcg wrote: post #154

I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager and probably had diagnosable delayed sleep phase disorder. Rules made by 55 year old early risers that only need 6 hours of sleep a night who have become school officials are just cruel and unusual punishment to a chunk of teenagers out there. In a better world there could be a class action lawsuit to make this stop--but its still considered okay to promote "early to be…

6:30AM is just some other city's 11:30AM... the difference in between is just light exposure, food consumption, and activity (the three big zeitgebers). Unless you think you'd never resynchronize after moving across the world, it's pretty obvious that your wake and sleep time would have to be a lot more malleable than you suggest.

I think you’re missing the point. At least I do resync to new locations. Just not the way you think.

I used to travel from London to the Bay Area for work with some regulatity. The first few days were amazing, because the combination of westwards jet lag plus night owl meant that I was getting to the office nice and early every day. As the jet lag went away, and I started to acclimate to the timezone, it usually took me less than a week to be back to a night owl routine, even without the usual stimuli.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#204

Post by rootusrootus »

emodendroket wrote: post #31

> Changing the operating hours of an institution so central to the community is far from easy. It requires strong leadership and adjustments by school bus companies and businesses offering services like child care and extracurricular clubs. Here's the elephant in the room. High schools start and end earlier with the idea that older kids can watch their siblings. I'd say a lack of public commitment to child care is al…

> High schools start and end earlier

Where? Everywhere I've lived, high school starts earlier and ends later. They have longer days than the elementary kids.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#205

Post by rootusrootus »

butterfi wrote: post #179

This is nothing new. What's more irritating to me is that these articles generate lots of conversation, but not one school will adjust its hours. Put up or shut up.

Well, you're assuming that just because we think it might be better for the kids, we should automatically do it. Everything is a compromise, including school scheduling. In particular, for any households where both parents work, shifting school hours could be a serious burden. Easy for those of us who work in an office with a flexible schedule, or have a stay-at-home mom/dad, but we're in the minority.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#206

Post by scrollaway »

devxpy wrote: post #191
lamontcg wrote: post #154

I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager and probably had diagnosable delayed sleep phase disorder. Rules made by 55 year old early risers that only need 6 hours of sleep a night who have become school officials are just cruel and unusual punishment to a chunk of teenagers out there. In a better world there could be a class action lawsuit to make this stop--but its still considered okay to promote "early to be…

Allow me to back this up with an actual piece of research. Here is an excerpt from the book "Why we sleep" (which BTW is written by a neuroscientist and psychology prof working at the Center for Human Sleep Science ) > An adult’s owlness or larkness, also known as their chronotype, is strongly determined by genetics. If you are a night owl, it’s likely that one (or both) of your parents is a night owl. Sadly, society…

I'm a non-24 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake...). I consistently drift forwards 1-2 hours / day. Nobody believes me when I tell them.

I started seriously tracking my sleep a few months back, and two months ago I started to use "Sleep as Android", which has a neat feature that shows you a graph of the times you are asleep.

This is mine for the past 2 months: https://i.imgur.com/PHohyO6.png

I was myself shocked by how consistent the drift is.

Anyway all that to say, I often experienced pretty much what that excerpt describes. Very frustrating.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#207

Post by manfredo »

rootusrootus wrote: post #204
emodendroket wrote: post #31

> Changing the operating hours of an institution so central to the community is far from easy. It requires strong leadership and adjustments by school bus companies and businesses offering services like child care and extracurricular clubs. Here's the elephant in the room. High schools start and end earlier with the idea that older kids can watch their siblings. I'd say a lack of public commitment to child care is al…

> High schools start and end earlier Where? Everywhere I've lived, high school starts earlier and ends later. They have longer days than the elementary kids.

High school started at 7:30 AM (actually 7:00 during some years since I had to take a math class a different high school, then commute to my high school). Elementary school started at 8:30 or 9:00, I forget exactly which.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#208

Post by devxpy »

marvin wrote: post #198
executesorder66 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why it's lazy to get up late, but not lazy to go to bed super early. What's the difference?

Leftover customs from agricultural society, that have become subconscious moralistic norms. If you sleep the daylight hours away on the farm, you will get less productive work done. After ten generations of this, there will be unspoken and unconscious rules about what sort of sleep schedules are acceptable. These don't go away by themselves.

Farming isn't and never was, the only occupation in the world.

So, simple solution - Don't be a farmer. Be a night guard or something.

This is really like the kind of problem we have today. We only have some 5 most popular professions in the world, so people are rigged to cater to the customs of these 5 professions. Everyone else is just "lazy"!

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#209

Post by artpepper2 »

dpatrick86 wrote: post #185
lamontcg wrote: post #154

I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager and probably had diagnosable delayed sleep phase disorder. Rules made by 55 year old early risers that only need 6 hours of sleep a night who have become school officials are just cruel and unusual punishment to a chunk of teenagers out there. In a better world there could be a class action lawsuit to make this stop--but its still considered okay to promote "early to be…

6:30AM is just some other city's 11:30AM... the difference in between is just light exposure, food consumption, and activity (the three big zeitgebers). Unless you think you'd never resynchronize after moving across the world, it's pretty obvious that your wake and sleep time would have to be a lot more malleable than you suggest.

Counter-point: When you fly to another time zone, your body naturally adjusts to the new local time. If sleep cycles were totally malleable, you would just stay on your original sleep cycle until you decided to change it.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep In

#210

Post by lamontcg »

devxpy wrote: post #200
executesorder66 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why it's lazy to get up late, but not lazy to go to bed super early. What's the difference?

Research has shown time and again; Humans can't think for themselves. This mentality is eminent, especially after the fact that we're taught bullshit like this from day 1: > Early to bed and early to rise makes and man healthy, wealthy and wise

"the early bird gets the worm just proves that the worm should have slept in"
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