According to the NICH the average child needs at least 9 hours of sleep per night, in adolescents the need for sleep actually increases and the average need is actually 10 hours or more. So lets work backward.
If the school day begins at 8:00 am, we must allow at least an hour for a child to wake, dress, eat, and travel to school. For children being bused we would need to add another hour for wait time at the stop, other pickups and the arrival must be 30 minutes prior to the bell. So a bused child would have to wake at 6:00 am for school. To attain the recommended 9 hours, the child would need to be asleep by 9:00 pm. In order for the child to be asleep by 9:00, the bedtime would need to be more like 8:30-8:45 pm. This seems quite reasonable and is exactly why adult TV programming begins at 9:00 pm.
Quite frankly though in society today this rarely happens. Many parents do not get off work until 5:00 pm or so, then by the time the kid is picked up, it’s usually closer to 6:00pm. At this point the various evening activities kick in; church, scout meetings, music lessons, dance lessons. Most children have at least one activity, most have more than one or siblings with a different activity schedule to sit through as well. These habitually begin at 7:00 and last for an hour, at which point there’s still the mandatory hour or so of homework, dinner to eat, daily chore to do, shower to take. Hmm, all have to be accomplished in the hour we had to work with. Sure it can be done, if one moves with a purpose with no dallying about. Maybe eat with one hand and pencil the math problem with the other. This is ok for adults, but this isn’t an ideal situation for kids, or young adults.
Soeaking of young adults, remember the NICH says they need more sleep. They also found that the natural sleep cycle becomes delayed in adolescence. This is why you’re teen is still sound asleep at noon in the summer or weekends. They truly do experience difficulty falling asleep at an earlier hour and need the extra sleep, because there is quite a bit going on there physiologically! This is a huge problem because many highschools begin at 7:00 or 7:30 am and the adolescents are not physically prepared for it. Some states have listened to the NICH advisement and moved the start time back to 8:00 or 8:30 and immediately found a reduction in tardiness and absenteeism.
Hmm, let them sleep a bit and they get to class on time and more often. Sounds like a plan, I wish more states would adopt it. So why don’t they? The teachers and staff are parents also, this means they would have to work later, and well you know they have kids to pick up, dinner to get, meetings and classes to go to, homework to grade and well they would like to get to sleep at a decent hour. Sound like a viscious cycle to you?
True we can’t please everyone, but we do need to consider how important this is. I can’t swear to my recall on this, but I believe we are up to 25% of children in the US are obese, or at high risk. We are seeing health problems in children which were previously confined to the adult population and these are due to the current weight and health status of the children. How does this relate? Easy, we now know that important hormones are released during sleep which helps to control weight. If our children are not recieving adequate amounts of sleep, they are at risk. Being left to a more natural rhythym in summer helps to combat this problem. Not a full solution, but it helps. Restoring daily physical education and recess progarms would help also!
The other reason why a summer break works has to do with neurology, just how much stimulation can a young mind be expected to handle and is also under study by the NIH. Facts here are harder to come by for a simple reason. It’s hard to get volunteers for the brain study of normal children. This is as it should be, I would hope parents aren’t willy nilly volunteering healthy kids to be poked and prodded particularly when it comes to their brains! Even as MRI’s and such are not seen to have unhealthy side effects, prudence rules here. The NIH is studying it now and though many findings are released, it will take several years to understand the full implications of the study.
One finding of the study was that there is not one, but several ‘brain blooms’ we experience as we grow. Sure we figured the brain underwent significant development as a baby learns to walk and speak, but it was believed that this curtailed around 4 or 5 years and then the brain set about refining the neural connections for the duration of life. The NIH study found that we go through several of these and it begins again with puberty. Figure about ten years of age, of course some earlier, some later. Hmm, the child began a significant period of neural growth and development after birth, again at age 1.5 which lasted until about age 5, began a period of neural refinement, which lasts several years and guess what, begins another vast period of neural growth and development which lasts until… college. The average age of prefrontal cortex full development is 23 years of age for males, females a little younger. This is why teens can grasp the idea of black holes and not understand why they should not leave the dishes in the bedroom.
The down time of summer is about the only long period of respite the brain gets. It stands to reason that any over taxed system is prone to break down, whether you’re talking about ecologicl, mechanical or biological systems. If we are overtaxing our youth with the modern schedule of activity then yes, we should cut back, but I doubt that will happen in this cut throat world. These afterschool enrighment programs are making great money and parents are pushing ever harder at the kids to complete more classes and tougher classes than their peers. I know students taking 8 courses, most of them honors, several AP and they belong to at least 4 organizations to rack up the volunteer hours and officer positions for the applications. Now this is trickling down to the middle school level also, where the state of Florida is considering having all 8th graders commit to an area of study. Get real, college freshman can’t even do that.
There was a time when this type of hype was reserved for the upper grades, but it trickles down, down, down. Look in the infant toy isle for the Baby Einstein and other ‘enrichment’ products. Take into account that many pre-school age children are in well, pre-schools being cared for in an educational program while the parent/s work. I work in one such program that serves children 1 to 5 yrs and am sad to say how many kids are dropped off at 7:00/7:30 in the morning still half asleep. The majority are picked up by 4:00 but there are many who have to go to aftercare and don’t get picked up until 6:00. This is an eleven hour day, with a nap time, but too long a day, day after day, for a child to truly develop and bloom. Now tell the child they have to do this for the next 12 years of their life, oh and then there’ll be college, work etc.
Still wonder why the kid may need a summer vacation?
