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Let Teenagers Sleep

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#111

Post by isk517 »

peoplearepeople wrote: post #54
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #17

As a teenager I was diagnosed with "ADD". Very intelligent, but unable to focus or complete assignments. My life habits were carb heavy unhealthy food (from the cafeteria), soda, lack of sleep due to long school commute, not much exercise As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables, I work from home and sleep in as far as I need every night. My thinking is laser sharp. They tried to medicate me with all sort…

> My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college Reminder to self, tell my children to ignore anything a 'guidance councilor' says

There's the old joke that if the guidance councilor was good at their job they wouldn't be working as a guidance councilor.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#112

Post by _whiteCaps_ »

sologoub wrote: post #49
bmitc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This showcases other problems with American society. With poor social support structures and urban design, kids can't simply walk to and from school, take public transportation, or ride school provided transportation to remove parents being chauffeurs.

That would not fix the coordination problem - if the family includes one of each (elementary, middle and high school kids) you still have to make breakfast for them, get everyone ready and head out. Let’s say they all don’t have to leave at the same time, but most other activities have to be coordinated and the sheer noise in the household will wake people up, not to mention it’s a bit easier to feed all 3 kids toget…

Most high schoolers are capable of feeding themselves breakfast and getting out the door. And in my experience, aren't going to let themselves be woken up early by the younger ones getting ready for school.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#113

Post by peoplearepeople »

sologoub wrote: post #49
bmitc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This showcases other problems with American society. With poor social support structures and urban design, kids can't simply walk to and from school, take public transportation, or ride school provided transportation to remove parents being chauffeurs.

That would not fix the coordination problem - if the family includes one of each (elementary, middle and high school kids) you still have to make breakfast for them, get everyone ready and head out. Let’s say they all don’t have to leave at the same time, but most other activities have to be coordinated and the sheer noise in the household will wake people up, not to mention it’s a bit easier to feed all 3 kids toget…

> you still have to make breakfast for them, get everyone ready

Past a certain age they can do this themselves. A 12 year old is very capable of doing everything besides driving a car

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#114

Post by yamtaddle »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #81
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #17

As a teenager I was diagnosed with "ADD". Very intelligent, but unable to focus or complete assignments. My life habits were carb heavy unhealthy food (from the cafeteria), soda, lack of sleep due to long school commute, not much exercise As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables, I work from home and sleep in as far as I need every night. My thinking is laser sharp. They tried to medicate me with all sort…

Weird. My guidance councillor did the same. Well, I wasn’t accepted to a school at the point in which they encouraged me to settle for less, but it was a very heartfelt “don’t even try”. I left the room very confused and upset. Went in with ambition and excitement about my future and left feeling like I must be a complete idiot. I remember her saying “Let’s focus on being realistic. You aren’t actually going to do th…

> I’d add though that unlike you, my diet more or less went the opposite direction and I feel much better too. I went completely plant-based with an emphasis on whole foods and as far as I can tell my entire body works better. I’m not saying you’re wrong because I absolutely believe you and agree that we were probably just extremely unhealthy before. Maybe any healthier diet would have sufficed. But yeah, this thing seems extremely variable from person to person. Plant based with heaps of carbs might annihilate your brain, but a bowl of barley with steamed tofu, broccoli, carrots, and peanut sauce is like heavenly brain food for me.

The great thing about the SAD (Standard American Diet) is that most any not-totally-insane restrictive diet will be significantly better. It hardly even matters which you choose, it will be better. When you start with terrible, even "bad" is an improvement!

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#115

Post by _yb2s »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #17

As a teenager I was diagnosed with "ADD". Very intelligent, but unable to focus or complete assignments. My life habits were carb heavy unhealthy food (from the cafeteria), soda, lack of sleep due to long school commute, not much exercise As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables, I work from home and sleep in as far as I need every night. My thinking is laser sharp. They tried to medicate me with all sort…

Modern psychiatry entirely ignores mechanism. All diagnoses are sets of symptoms, and treatments are drugs that reduce specific symptoms. It isn’t surprising that in many cases the causes would be obvious, but there isn’t any type of system for even trying to approach mental health that way.

Another problem is the feedback loop of mental illness. A lot of people might feel better if they got exercise, ate healthy, got enough sleep, made some friends, took on some fun hobbies, etc. but most people aren’t willing or able to do any of that if they are stuck in a bad mental state.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#116

Post by musicale »

solveit wrote: post #44
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #17

As a teenager I was diagnosed with "ADD". Very intelligent, but unable to focus or complete assignments. My life habits were carb heavy unhealthy food (from the cafeteria), soda, lack of sleep due to long school commute, not much exercise As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables, I work from home and sleep in as far as I need every night. My thinking is laser sharp. They tried to medicate me with all sort…

> My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college, just a community college (despite the fact that I got admitted to a decent state school) What's wrong with guidance counselors in American high schools? Why do I keep hearing about them giving kids incredibly stupid advice?

> just a community college

Community colleges are the best deal in higher education, and often have faculty who are interested in teaching rather than research.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#117

Post by harry8 »

What time does school start in the USA? I assumed it would be the same as here but apparently not, never heard of a school formal lesson starting before 8:30 here and 9am start is the norm for all school and always(?) has been.

Separate to that how cynical should we be about these psychology studies? As a science it seems hell bent on demonstrating that it is closer to poetry or religion which means we should start with an extremely sceptical prior before closely examining evidence /especially/ when it is telling us something to which we're sympathetic. Stats is hard, sure. Get it wrong by all means, repeatedly wrong even. There is no excuse for not owning that and correcting it rather than doubling down when that comes out if you're claiming to be a science. None. No excuse for not clearly identifying it every time it happens and publicly noting it. [1] No excuse that every first year, university level psych textbook seems to contain the completely discredited [2] "Stanford Prison Experiment" as though it was anything other than gross scientific fraud. It is still being taught to first year as though it were science. How? Seriously. Is everyone in psychology a fraud? Surely not.

[1] https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2016/03/05/29195/

[2] https://www.nine.com.au/entertainment/viral/stanford-prison-....

edit: links backing it up for those who haven't yet heard how bad it is or just want it to go away. It won't.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#118

Post by steve_adams_86 »

juve1996 wrote: post #74
exfatloss wrote: post #2

Can't stress enough how important this is. People's circadian rhythms shift with age, and during teenage years, they are the latest (or most "night owl"-like). Current school times practically guarantee that teenagers will be too tired and sleep-deprived to learn much.

And yet many teenagers do just fine and end up learning a lot. How do they manage? Are they tired? Do they have magical circadian rhythms?

Ideal support at home in some cases. Being allowed to rest and sleep as needed, good food around, transportation to help minimize commute times, etc. Having this makes it much easier to meet the demands.

Not in all cases. But there are absolutely logistical advantages some kids have and others don’t, and some kids suffer significantly for that disadvantage.

Always exceptions to rules of course. And humans can still do impressive things under duress. Maybe the question is not how do they manage, but how much better could they manage under more ideal schedules, and how many more kids would do better as well?

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#119

Post by tptacek »

flandish wrote: post #28
tptacek wrote: post #7

One big reason this shift isn't happening is that it creates coordination problems: for many families, everyone leaves for school at the same time, so if you move grade 9 forward an hour, you have to do the same with grade 4 to get any benefit; the 9th grader is taking the 4th grader to school. That problem stopped this shift dead recently where I live.

If.. uhh… society wasn’t so capitalistically expensive as to require the entire household’s adults to work, a lot of these logistical concerns would work out. Resulting in smarter and healthier children. But: smart and healthy children demand wages as adults that cut into shareholder profits…

Plenty of families that don't need two incomes have two working parents; parents work because work is fulfilling.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#120

Post by geoduck14 »

xypage wrote: post #78
solveit wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college, just a community college (despite the fact that I got admitted to a decent state school) What's wrong with guidance counselors in American high schools? Why do I keep hearing about them giving kids incredibly stupid advice?

Because a guidance counselor doing a good job is really boring, they ask you where you want to go to school, get you links to those applications, and maybe walk you through the application/point you to a campus resource that'll proofread your essays before you submit them. None of these are particularly note worthy, no one's going to go home and write about that experience, so you don't hear about it. That's what my…

I agree. My guidance counselor had 2 3-ring binders FULL of schools that fit some criteria I had, but were also aligned to my disabilities. My mom and I spent ~2 hours with the counselor looking through the schools and applying. It was pretty boring. They also arranged for schools to come and talk to us about them. That was rad because we got to skip class
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