Adam Ruins Everything: Sleep...

If you’re like me and you have children that require you to wake them up for anything, this blog may pique your interest.

 

Have you ever watched the show Adam Ruins Everything?

I tend to watch it when I have time to watch some tv. Well, this had to be a coincidence watching this specific episode.

 

Did you know that when kids reach their teenage years, they need more sleep than adults? Hey, blame that on puberty I guess but this biochemical situation causes sleep delay.  This "sleep delay" can be a real problem if they are required 8 -9 am hours of sleep considering they usually have to get up to be at school by 7:30 am, but of course as I have noted and can recall teenagers usually don’t fall asleep until 11 pm.

How do we expect them to function on such little sleep?

How and when did this start? Well, back in the day, schools started at 9 am, due to each school level usually including 3 group types: high school, middle school and elementary. So each school level and facility types had their own school buses.

 

Well sometime in the 70’s, the schools cut the budget, forcing bus drivers to drive for all 3 levels and facility locations back-to-back. (Drop off and pick up).

 

So, mind-bogglingly enough guess what?! This forced the kids who needed the most sleep to get up the earliest. What interested me the most was I discovered that the American Medical Association has been begging middle and high schools to change the starting times to a later timeframe to align more with the kids' natural sleeping schedule, of course to no avail. 

After watching this episode, it really opened my eyes, especially since I’m one of those parents who kept telling my kid to “just go to bed earlier” or even yelling at him to motivate him to get up and out the door, meanwhile, my youngest daughter is full of energy and has a hang out time of an hour and 20 mins AFTER, I’ve dropped her brother off at middle school.

 

Honestly, I shouldn't even start on what happens when my son gets home mid-afternoon, and my daughter comes home closer to dinner. It's absolutely crazy for a family to try to schedule and balance each and every "business day". I don’t know how parents who do not have kids in after-school programs can handle it.

I now understand better about how other parents prefer to homeschool.

Setting a schedule that’s perhaps more natural and easier to manage for that family's lifestyle with a more natural sleep pattern seems perhaps like a better option than those that send our kids to school during pivotal biological changes they require emotional support, plenty of food( like a lot of food), and MORE SLEEP!