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Hours of sleep for Sec School children

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 10:16 am
by zbear
Not sure if this is the correct place to post.

I like to know n hope parents can share -

1. how many hours do your children sleep on weekdays?
2. do you feel its enough?
3. what is the impact on their health - eg, lack of sleep is causing them to fall sick easily?

I am very concerned that Singapore teenagers are not having enough rest with their hectic school life.

:rant:

Re: Hours of sleep for Sec School children

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 10:23 am
by slmkhoo
I agree with your concern,and I'm aghast when I hear of how late some kids sleep. My daughter (sec 3, turning 15 this year) sleeps around 10pm and wakes at 5.45am on weekdays. That's nearly 8 hrs, so I think it's adequate. She gets to wake later during weekends if there's nothing on, but then also sleeps a bit later (but not usually beyond 10.30pm). Healthwise, she only gets a cold or something like that maybe twice a year. She was actually sleeping at 9.30pm last year, but we told her that she doesn't need that much sleep! I remember my sleeping hours were 11pm to 6am when I was that age.

Re: Hours of sleep for Sec School children

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 10:59 am
by Nelliez
My Sec 4 daughter sleeps around 11 pm and wakes up at 6:30 am. Sometimes she gets to sleep earlier at around 10 pm (when there is not much homework/revision to do, which is very rare). She will wake up later (at around 10 am) during the weekends. I find that most of the time she has enough sleep. Well, she gets flu quite often but she will get well within a few days.

Re: Hours of sleep for Sec School children

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 2:36 pm
by meremortal
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 011514.php

Study finds later school start times improve sleep and daytime functioning in adolescents

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Julie Boergers, Ph.D., a psychologist and sleep expert from the Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center, recently led a study linking later school start times to improved sleep and mood in teens. The article, titled "Later School Start Time is Associated with Improved Sleep and Daytime Functioning in Adolescents," appears in the current issue of the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics.

"Sleep deprivation is epidemic among adolescents, with potentially serious impacts on mental and physical health, safety and learning. Early high school start times contribute to this problem," said Boergers. "Most teenagers undergo a biological shift to a later sleep-wake cycle, which can make early school start times particularly challenging. In this study, we looked at whether a relatively modest, temporary delay in school start time would change students' sleep patterns, sleepiness, mood and caffeine use."

Boergers' team administered the School Sleep Habits Survey to boarding students attending an independent high school both before and after their school start time was experimentally delayed from 8 to 8:25 a.m. during the winter term.

The delay in school start time was associated with a significant (29 minute) increase in sleep duration on school nights, with the percentage of students receiving eight or more hours of sleep on a school night jumping from 18 to 44 percent. The research found that younger students and those sleeping less at the start of the study were most likely to benefit from the schedule change. And once the earlier start time was reinstituted during the spring term, teens reverted back to their original sleep levels.

Daytime sleepiness, depressed mood and caffeine use were all significantly reduced after the delay in school start time. The later school start time had no effect on the number of hours students spent doing homework, playing sports or engaging in extracurricular activities.

Boergers, who is also co-director of the Pediatric Sleep Disorders Clinic at Hasbro Children's Hospital, said that these findings have important implications for public policy. "The results of this study add to a growing body of research demonstrating important health benefits of later school start times for adolescents," she said. "If we more closely align school schedules with adolescents' circadian rhythms and sleep needs, we will have students who are more alert, happier, better prepared to learn, and aren't dependent on caffeine and energy drinks just to stay awake in class."


###
Boergers' principal affiliation is the Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center, a division of the Lifespan health system in Rhode Island. She also has academic appointments at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Departments of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and Pediatrics.

About the Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center

Established in 2002, The Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center (BHCRC), located in Providence, R.I, is a collaborative group of nearly 40 child mental health researchers from Bradley Hospital and Hasbro Children's Hospital, both major teaching hospitals for The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Annually, investigators direct more than 50 externally funded projects, and annual external support averages nearly $10 million. The BHCRC encompasses a broad spectrum of research programs - exploring new insights into the genetic roots of autism; finding pediatric bio-behavioral markers of bipolar disorder; creating effective therapies for OCD; devising effective prevention strategies for adolescent sexual risk behaviors and obesity; examining public health strategies for putting evidence based interventions into practice; and many more - that share a commitment to studying the impact of psychological factors on the growth and development of children and their families.

Re: Hours of sleep for Sec School children

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 3:10 pm
by slmkhoo
Later school start times have been debated again and again over the years, and I doubt anything will change here. In any case, with our tight transport and hot weather, starting early has benefits too. Anyway, we all survived early starts and are none the worse for it (at least, I think so!).

Re: Hours of sleep for Sec School children

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 3:16 pm
by zbear
slmkhoo wrote:Later school start times have been debated again and again over the years, and I doubt anything will change here. In any case, with our tight transport and hot weather, starting early has benefits too. Anyway, we all survived early starts and are none the worse for it (at least, I think so!).

I agree with slmkhoo. My dd has one day that starts at 9am. That didn't change our pattern. In order to avoid the jam, we still proceed as normal - 6.30am.

My wish - less homework, less CCA so that they can sleep early.

Re: Hours of sleep for Sec School children

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 3:54 pm
by Love Clouds
My DD1 sleeps around 12+ am and wakes up for sch at 6.45am on most weekdays (luckily we live quite near her school), 10-11am during weekend.
It has become her sleeping pattern since last yr (year 1).
I was worried initially too as she was used to sleeping for 8-9 hrs during primary sch days. For the first few months of year 1, she felt tired, sleepy and frustrated. She had headaches every few weeks and had to take panadol in order to continue her homework that night. It pains me to see her going through that. Over the time, I think her body got used to the new lifestyle and things went better for her the 2nd half of the year. If sch cannot reduce workload, I can only hope her body can adjust well to the stressful life of a student in Singapore.

Re: Hours of sleep for Sec School children

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 4:12 pm
by Peony
Be it in primary school and now secondary school, my DD gets close to 8 hours of sleep. Even when some parents complain that homework keeps them up till 11pm, it's not that way for us. My qn is, what time do they start on homework? If they procrastinate till after dinner or have lots of tuition, then is school really to be blamed?

Time management is key. DD uses free time in school to do her homework. She even has time for her favourite TV shows & time for revision before bedtime. Right now she's only in year two. If she cannot learn to manage her time now, it's gonna be harder in the years to come. She doesn't play computer/mobile games nor chat online or via phone with friends. Both are her choice which helps with time management.

Re: Hours of sleep for Sec School children

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 4:35 pm
by Love Clouds
Yes, time management is important. I had been nagging her on it until I decided to stop and let her deal with it. I know her sch ends late most days (CCA, extra training, AEP, piano lessons, no tuition yet cos she has no time for it) and by the time she is back home is about 7+. She will bathe and eat dinner, watch TV programmes, play a bit of her ipad games, relax till 9+ before she starts doing homework. I let her have more rest time as long as she can cope well.

Re: Hours of sleep for Sec School children

Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 5:30 pm
by slmkhoo
Peony wrote:Be it in primary school and now secondary school, my DD gets close to 8 hours of sleep. Even when some parents complain that homework keeps them up till 11pm, it's not that way for us. My qn is, what time do they start on homework? If they procrastinate till after dinner or have lots of tuition, then is school really to be blamed?

Time management is key. DD uses free time in school to do her homework. She even has time for her favourite TV shows & time for revision before bedtime. Right now she's only in year two. If she cannot learn to manage her time now, it's gonna be harder in the years to come. She doesn't play computer/mobile games nor chat online or via phone with friends. Both are her choice which helps with time management.
Agree with this. My daughter has 2 afternoons of CCA, but no tuition or other lessons. She also tries to do her work in school if possible, and seems fairly efficient. Except for her CCA days, she will start her work soon after she gets home and then after dinner for a while. She doesn't use her phone or spend time on social media much. There are days she's working right up to 9.30pm (usually CCA days), but most days she'll be done earlier. One of the problems about 'too much homework', at least for my daughter's school, is that some work can be infinitely stretched out if the student is fussy, inefficient, disorganised, indecisive, or a perfectionist. So are also things that parents need to watch out for and advise on. And if students leave things to the last minute when the task was given out 2 weeks earlier, then it will usually mean a late night.