A SLEEP DEPRIVED MOTHER IMAGINES ANOTHER WAY
STORY BY Heather Kirk-Davidoff ILLUSTRATION BY Kelly Miller
The results of dozens of surveys and studies are conclusive: teenagers need more sleep. My personal research has led me to an additional finding: parents need more sleep too.
When I watch my three teenagers stumble around the kitchen at 6 a.m. on school days, pouring orange juice in their cereal, I often think of how different life was just a decade ago. My kids jumped out of bed filled with energy well before dawn each day. I was the one begging for just one more hour of sleep.
Remember what those sleep deprived days were like? Neither do I. When you don’t sleep, you seem to lose the ability to hear, assimilate or even remember new information. When our twins were just over a year old, Dan and I took turns sleeping every other night. Recently, a friend reminisced about how she had been our kids’ first babysitter, when they were just six months old. Dan and I were surprised to hear that we had actually had a night out. Neither of us had any memory of such a thing.
What happened to those bright eyed early risers? There’s a solid body of research proving that changes in adolescent sleep patterns aren’t entirely due to our teens’ desire to text their friends for hours and roam around the house when their parents are asleep. Changes in sleep patterns are rooted in the changing brain structure and chemistry that come with adolescence. The research is conclusive: it isn’t natural for a teenager to fall asleep before 11 p.m.
That’s all well and good during the lazy days of summer. When September rolls around again, the high school bell will ring at 7:30 a.m. — or earlier. You do the math: it is impossible for our kids to get the sleep they need during the school year, a problem they share with the vast majority of American teenagers.
This isn’t just a minor inconvenience. Keep in mind what constant sleep deprivation feels like: You can’t remember things. You can’t listen. You can’t assimilate new information. What’s more, study after study has shown that sleep deprivation is related to moodiness and depression as well as poor impulse control.
In other words, a few more hours of sleep each night might make our kids more pleasant, more reasonable, more responsible and more successful in school. Sleep is the magic wand.
How can our teens get more sleep? The obvious solution is to start high school later. After a fair amount of public pressure, the Howard County public schools agreed last year to look at possible changes in the school schedule. I sincerely hope our school district follows the example of other schools across the country and pushes high school start times back an hour. But in the meantime, what can parents do to help?
The obvious answer is, of course, to make the kids go to bed earlier. But that’s easier said than done. It’s been years since my kids have had a bedtime. I’m just too tired to fight that battle after 10:00 p.m. — when I’m most likely to be moody and have poor impulse control.
It’s not just the kids. Like most Americans, I myself could use more sleep. There are always a few more emails to read – and respond to – before bed, a few more edits on whatever I’m writing. Then I watch “The Daily Show” and then I scan through Facebook. By then, I have a few more emails to read.
We need to stop arguing with our teens over bedtime and start having honest conversations with our kids about how we all need to get more sleep. We could start by comparing notes about what’s keeping us up. Why is it hard to call it quits at the end of the day? What are the consequences of sleep deprivation? Is it possible to catch up on the weekends?
What if we established some household-wide habits? Experts recommend turning off electronics an hour before bedtime. That might be a challenge for many of us –teens and adults – but it’s worth trying, even for a week or two. Are there other protocols we could embrace? A late night warm drink accompanied by a moment of gratitude? *
