Despite the fact that sleep is essential for life and as necessary as food, water, and the air, we breathe more than one third of adults in this country. And more than two thirds of our teenagers are not obtaining the recommended amount of sleep.
Impact of school start time on Teen Sleep
Teen Sleep schedule time
Our teenagers are suffering more primarily due to early school start times, which are in direct conflict with the normal developmental shift in adolescent sleep patterns. Melatonin also known as the dark hormone that signals sleep is secreted later for teenagers contributing to this delay in their sleep and wake times. So teens are not lazy. We’re not coddling them by letting them sleep in. They’re actually biologically different than the rest of us. And they need the right amount of sleep at the right time to feel rested. People always ask me why don’t we just tell them to just try harder to sleep. but it would honestly it’s like telling me to, it would be like me telling you to try harder to go to the bathroom. If you didn’t have to go, you, you can’t force this biology, and teenagers all over the world experience this alteration, it’s simply a part of growing older.
So rather than trying to change the unchangeable, our time would be better spent understanding what teenagers need to feel successful and happy. They sleep best between the hours of 10:45 PM and 8:00 AM. It might help to think of teenagers, as sleeping in a totally different time zone than the rest of us. So 7:00 AM to a teenager is like 4:00 AM to an adult. Unfortunately, the majority of our teenagers are required to wake up before 7:00 AM because the NA nation’s, school start time. average is 8:00 AM and 87% of high school students here in Minnesota start school before eight 30, which is a recommended time. And that affects more than 200,000 teenagers just in our state. So it makes it difficult if not impossible for the majority of teenagers to get the recommended eight to 10 hours of sleep. So like adults, there’s going to be some teens that need more sleep than that. There’s gonna be some teens that can get by on less. but the problem that we’re facing here is that we’re expecting the majority of teenagers to get by on less and they’re, suffering from the effects of doing so.
Exciting is that we can fix this problem. We can show that when we, we change to later school start times that there’s better academic performance, less substance use. Our children are more fit and healthy. there’s less car accidents and their mood improves as well. If we can get them at least eight hours of sleep, that’s what the research is telling us. And I’m really proud of our town of Maita because, we were early adopters in changing our school’s start time. Years ago, we switched from 7:30 AM to 8:00 AM. So we contributed to this body of research, that the start time actually of eight 30 is superior because in this study there were several other schools involved and the ones that changed their start time to eight 30 or later, had better outcomes. We still had good outcomes, but not as robust, contrary to fears and expectations kids won’t just stay up later.
[Teen Sleep schedule time]
There’s evidence that kids actually will get more sleep. And anecdotally too, if you just talk to schools here in Minnesota and talk to school leaders, they will tell you that teenagers come in and they’re more relaxed in the morning. there’s not coffee cups strewn all about and and they’re actually paying attention during the first hour of class and they’re not falling asleep. So this might really surprise you, but being awake during class helps you learn and that’s why we send kids to school, right? To learn. It’s not about athletics. We send them there to learn. so what we see there is that sleep then improves their cognitive ability and it translates to better grades and core classes, higher scores on standardized tests. Students who are well rested are less likely to be tardy and more likely to graduate.
So you may think the function of sleep is simply for rest and recharging your batteries, but sleep is vital for the process of learning and memory, sleep, cleanses, and rids your brain of waste. I know you’re familiar with the saying sleep on it. Sleep really does help you problem solve. So have you ever wondered why, how does that process work? So I want you all to think about a time that you were working on a project for work or home, and you’re trying to take in new information about new tools and strategies and in those situations, have you ever felt overwhelmed? Like your brain is just fall in a way it kind of is actually. So imagine your brain is a town and instead of nerve cells, you have homes and businesses, and instead of pathways between those nerve cells you have roads connecting all these structures.
Research on starting School Late
Teen Sleep schedule time
When your mind is working out a solution to a problem, your brain is building many new connections everywhere. Now, some of these new pathways are going to be very helpful and others are gonna prove to not be so useful. they will lead to stop signs and one way roads and dead ends and all night, while you sleep your brain rids you of those unneeded pathways and, keeps only the important ones, making them nice and strong and puts resources into those main roads. it’s a process called synaptic pruning so much like you would Pune a garden to get rid of the, the old growth to make room for the healthy new vegetation. That’s what’s happening in your brains every night when you sleep. So sleep really does help you process and find that clear path. So it makes sense that teens would do better in school and they also make better choices. So we see less risk taking behavior,in teens who sleep well, sleep is also important for appetite regulations. So there’s less obesity for our children. And even if you don’t have a teenager it’s worth digging in to school start times because the roads are safer. There are numerous studies to show that there’s less car accidents in those towns where they’ve shifted school start times.
[Teen Sleep schedule time]
I should ask everyone a show of hands who feels moody if they did not get enough sleep. All right. Yes, I totally agree. And that’s really a concern what we’re seeing in our teenagers and not just moodiness, but actually depression. There’s actually one study out of Fairfax that actually also showed that the less sleep a child got, they were more likely to talk about, suicide and actually more risk of attempted suicide as well. So there’s a correlation there, which is really concerning to us in, in healthcare.
Sleep Regulates Emotion
Sleep is important for mood regulation. If we’re sleep deprived, the front of our brain called the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for thinking and decision making is unable to communicate with that inner part of our brain. That’s tied to our emotions, our amygdala. So the consequence of this incomplete connection results in the retention of these negative memories, and we forget the neutral or positive parts of our day. So when your child comes home from school and they’ve received an a on their test and on another test, they failed, they’re gonna be more likely to remember that failure and less likely to remember that success. So we need to make sure our teenagers are getting adequate sleep. And when we change school start times, the data shows that they’re ha happier and healthier and less depressed.
[Teen Sleep schedule time]
So based on two decades, worth of indisputable concrete data, the American academy at pediatrics, the center for disease control and the American medical association just this summer now has joined in, asking for a policy statement that we all adjust our school start times for middle and high school students to eight 30 or later. So it’s time for communities to dig in and do the work that it’s gonna take. I encourage you to start by talking to your friends and neighbors about it. The first question that seems to come up is about busing. So will this be an extra cost to taxpayers to avoid the extra cost to what schools will do often is flip the bus schedules. So the elementary age students will take the earlier bus routes rather than the teenagers, which makes sense. there’s not, as much of an issue with, with children, younger children, because they’re biologically predisposed to these earlier bed times and earlier wake times they’re focused and ready to learn at that time of day. So biologically it makes sense athletics was an issue that I used to hear. People bring up a lot, but I’m hearing less of that lately actually, largely because coaches are appreciating the competitive edge that a good night’s sleep can provide, in respect to improving performance players tend to remember plays better. also there’s less injury. So research will show us that children who receive six hours of sleep compared to those teens who receive nine hours of sleep are four times more likely to be injured.
What about after school jobs?
Teen Sleep schedule time
What about after school jobs? Business owners, have had no problems with that. Students simply reschedule their work schedules.
[Teen Sleep schedule time]
Some schools have seen an increase in after school care, and that is the reality of changing school start time. Wisetta local school here has handled this in a fabulous way. They’ve actually incorporated their child psychology class for their teenagers. So the teenagers, head over to the elementary school for that last part of the day. And then some of them stay on afterwards and work in the aftercare program. And the, young students love having the cool teenagers around so many people all over the state and the nation are finding creative ways to make this happen and issues that loomed large work out in the end. So supporting your schools is really one of the most important ways that you can dig in schools need to make decisions on what is in the best interest of students, even if that is in conflict with the existing schedules that have been built around the convenience of adults else.
So make sleep a priority in your family, allow enough time for sleep for yourself, adults seven to eight hours. Think about that in your lives. Are you making time for sleep for yourself and know that your children need more sleep than you set an appropriate bedtime with younger children, it’s great. If you can create a calm bedtime routine every night, a nice bath or story time, and with older children who get to bed more independently, have them set a timer on their phones, one to two hours before bed, which can alert them to start their routine, but also make sure that you have a time that lights are off remove all TVs. This is where it gets unpopular, remove all TVs, smartphones, computers out of the bedroom and avoid those light emitting devices one to two hours before bed, because what they do is they push off that secretion of melatonin even further. So, in addition to setting bed times, you need to enforce them.
[Teen Sleep schedule time]
I know that’s difficult because i have teenagers. So I, I realize it’s difficult, but we really need to send messages to our children that sleep is valuable and teach them strategies and tools so that they will continue to value their health and sleep for life. Because just because something’s hard to do doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.