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Rethinking School Start Times By Elizabeth OBrien
Now how do you feel waking up at 4 AM? Like a zombie? Irritable, moody, depressed?
I think we should have a later high school start time because puberty affects a teen’s biological clock. Teenager’s bodies don’t release melatonin until later than an adult or a child, and this makes waking teens up at 6 AM the equivalent to waking an adult up at 4 AM.
Now how do you feel waking up at 4 AM? Like a zombie? Irritable, moody, depressed? You can’t concentrate? This is how most teens spend five days a week for at least 180 days if not longer. It’s no wonder a lot of students go home and sleep for a few hours before getting up. I know a lot of my friends will take a nap for a few hours, get up and then do the hours of homework they have to complete.
Major medical organizations strongly recommend that high schools and middle schools start no later than 8:30 AM, although most schools start at 7:20 or earlier. That means students get up sometimes hours before school to get ready, pack their bag, and get dressed/fix their hair. Some students even have to drive up to an hour to get to school. This creates a real danger in putting sleep-deprived teens behind the wheel. Teens are new drivers, and this increases the risk of a car accident. Recent evidence has shown that getting less than 6 hours of sleep has the same effect as having a blood alcohol above the legal limit.
My friend Oliver (I’ve changed the name) is constantly asleep during school. If his work is done you can find him snoozing away. He is cranky, moody, and often depressed.
The stress of classwork, blanketed over the sleep-deprived teen, creates more friction and possibilities for them to act out. Research shows that for every hour lost, teens have a 38% increase in sadness, depression, and hopelessness. Furthermore, studies show that there is a greater risk for attempted suicides and substance abuse. Sleep deprivation is also linked to heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. All health problems that plague our country more and more every day, especially in young adults.
It’s a no-brainer that not getting enough sleep makes a teen have less concentration, less attention, lower grades, and poor performance in sports. Our teenage years are the years our brains are undergoing dramatic changes in brain development that will affect reasoning, problem-solving, and good judgment. We are still learning about the skills that are necessary for the future. Yet we keep our teens in this sleep deprived and weakened state because of possible conflicts. They are real issues, but we need to get past them in order to better our society. There are concerns about buses, the little kids getting home after dark, after-school sports and or activities, and jobs. So, when you’re “preparing” your child for the real world by waking them up early, take a moment and think about how that’s the same as telling a small child that they can’t sleep when they’re tired, in the middle of the day, “because the real world doesn’t have nap time.”