<p>How many hours a night do your kids sleep? I spoke to the mom of a top student in the class ahead of ds’s, and her child gets only 2-3 hours of sleep a night. This would explain, I guess, why ds is not a top student. I’m just wondering whether that’s common.</p>
<p>How does she know that her child only gets 2-3 hours of sleep a night? Does she stay up all night to keep track? Seriously. </p>
<p>I have two high school juniors and I hear these tales about their friends all the time. I keep telling them that most are “made up” to enhance the kids “reps” at school.
I try to make sure that my kids get 6-7 hours of sleep a night. Yes, I am generally up as late as they are, and I wake them in the morning. They are at a work-heavy, nationally known independent high school, they each play two instruments at a high level, do community service regularly, participate in varsity sports, school drama productions, etc. What they don’t do is spend hours and hours on Facebook, (3 a.m. is when they insist some of their friends are posting) and they don’t sleep in 'til noon on the weekends. :)</p>
<p>edit: I wish they could get 8-9 hours of sleep a night, because I know that’s what they need, but they save that for the weekend.</p>
<p>Mine does get her 8-9 hours of sleep, except Friday night. We allow her to stay out till midnight on Friday night and she has to be up early on Saturday. However, she sleeps till noon on Sunday to compensate!</p>
<p>My oldest got 8 hours of sleep every night. He was a top student. My younger son never gets less than five and usually gets between 7 and 8. He makes up for it a bit on weekends. He could get more sleep if he started his homework earlier. He’s not a tippy top student, though I believe he’s in the top 25%.</p>
<p>momofthree…I will enter this den of trash talking sour grapes to give a knuckle bump to another mom of twins! ;)</p>
<p>Here is what I can offer:</p>
<p>Started early, first visits were in summer before sophomore year. </p>
<p>If you get them both to a college fair and encourage them to pick up literature from schools that look interesting for any reason. )My D brought home brochures that had images of soccer players or horses on them as well as any all-girl school and any that had “Catholic” on the front.) Her final list included many of those schools</p>
<p>They can each go on one another’s tours because you never know what will float your kid’s boat and what you think may be tops for one may turn out to be perfect for the other.</p>
<p>Public schools are generally going to offer the most variety and something for each.</p>
<p>I hope that if mine end up at the same school that it will be one of the two large publics so that each can create her own space.</p>
<p>I hope that if they are at different schools that they end up on campuses close enough so that they can visit from time to time.</p>
<p>My girls are best friends and I think it is important that they both branch out a bit. In the same way that I wouldn’t advise non-related best buddies to go to the same school and remain as physically close to one another as they had been before.</p>
<p>All my wishes aside, it is possible that we will have a drop of in Texas the same day as a drop off is scheduled in Oregon. We will work it out but it will really stink!</p>
<p>I loved petersons.com for the college search as well as for keeping track of their lists. Like the college fair, many of the schools that they ended up applying to came out of that early petersons search.</p>
<p>My girls both ended up applying to 9 schools. 7 the same and 2 different each. So far they have received all acceptances so we haven’t had to deal with the "She got in and I didn’t " thing. </p>
<p>pm me if you have any specific questions. </p>
<p>oh and scualum…I have no idea what post padding means. My posts are always meaty and focused on college.</p>
<p>zoosermom, your D can write that resume so that it reveals more than just a list of activities. She should describe (succinctly) what her responsiblities were for each thing she did keeping in mind what qualities it reveals. </p>
<p>For example don’t just say “Newspaper editor” say “responsible for meeting deadlines, deciding on contents, developing features, for a weekly issue.”
or (from my high school years)
“library intern- in addition to shelving books, I was responsible for helping put together displays of recent new stories and visiting speaker. When my immediate superior went on vacation I did his job for two weeks. This included lettering signs and mounting posters.”</p>
<p>FAP that’s great about the math. You may want to get a recommendation from that teacher.</p>
<p>my child just could not function without 8 hours of sleep!</p>
<p>At our house, I fall asleep on the couch around 8:30.<br>
D sends me upstairs around 9:00.<br>
The kids stop by to give me a kiss and tuck me in around 10:00.<br>
They read in bed till 10:30. And sleep for about 8 hours. </p>
<p>It’s been like this for years. We’re a family that thrives on routine. A backward routine, but one that works. ;)</p>
<p>I’ll miss it when they’re gone. :(</p>
<p>My D1 the '10er goes to bed after me, on good nights around 11 but she can sometimes still be up into the early hours working on an assignment. Not that she procrastinates (much) but she gets a lot of work, and she doesn’t rush through it, plus she plays 3 sports and does some other activities. She also spends a good chunk of the weekend (maybe 30-60% of awake time) doing work. She gets up around 6 and doe sleep in on weekends when she doesn’t have other commitments.</p>
<p>My D2 a '12er spends less time on school work and more time goofing off. She also rushes through her work more. I try to get her in bed around 10 because the work is done by then and she needs help getting up in the morning.</p>
<p>I am usually in bed before both of them, H is up later.</p>
<p>historymom, thanks for coming here and giving that great twin advice. We appreciate it and will encourage momof3 to do a courtesy post back at ya.</p>
<p>My S has always seemed to do better with a bit more sleep than the average kid his age. We try to ensure he gets at least 7-8 hrs/night during the week, although this sometimes get the short shrift when exams are coming and then he’s up before me, pre-5:30 am. On weekends, we allow the snooze until 10 am or so, schedules permitting. He’s now in swim season, which seems to take more out of him than water polo, so he needs the zzzzs and has AP Physics as his first period eye opener!</p>
<p>Jackief: S has one exam and the final to go to complete the online linear algebra class. I believe JHU-CTY provides an instructor eval as well as the raw grade on the transcript but I intend to find out. I did forward the laudatory comments on to the AP Calc teacher, who suggested S take this route, because he will be writing one of the LORs in the fall.</p>
<p>I had one more thing to say about the letterman jackets/varsity letters… It seems from reading the discussions here and in the '09 thread that some(many?) schools give the letters to all who are on the varsity team? That isn’t the case at our school.</p>
<p>For xc running and xc skiing, it is the kids who “score” at the meets, which are the top 4(ski) or 5(run) kids per gender. I guess if there were two kids who flipped between the bottom scoring spot and the spot right under that, they may give them both letters. In softball it was the starters. In crew it is the kids in the top two boats per gender, which would be 8 rowers and 2 coxswains. I haven’t had direct experience with other varsity sports at our school.</p>
<p>By the end of this year D will have had 8 of 9 seasons on Varsity with probably 6 letters.
We don’t have letters for academics or arts.</p>
<p>Part of what works to her advantage is the school is small and for some sports there is not a JV team. And some are so small that over half the team is needed to score, so lettering in running her freshman year was I think 5 of 8 girls.</p>
<p>Any kid who’s only sleeping 2-3 hours a night is really harming both their physical and mental health. I’m a big believer in a good night’s sleep - when D was still in HS she usually got 7-8 hours, and S is the same way. The difference is that D spent most of her non-sleep time studying (and was #1 in her class) while S spends much more of his socializing. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>FAP, FABULOUS job for your son on his exam! I’m glad you passed them on to the teacher who will write his LOR – hope he’ll remember to include some of those comments!</p>
<p>As for sleep – the longer I am on CC, the more I am convinced that mathmom’s two sons split time between her house and mine. Right down the nitty gritty details, interests, school lists, need for sleep, etc. :)</p>
<p>I missed the letter jacket discussion. How many pages back is that? :)</p>
<p>DD is pretty hard core about getting her 8 hours… In bed no later than 11 - usually 10 and up at 7. </p>
<p>DS on the other hand, seems to have a random sleep pattern - 14 hours some days, 4 another day… </p>
<p>I think it varies by kid - but 2-3 seems like way too little…</p>
<p>FAP - what wonderful feedback!!!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>sigh, I found some posts #3073,3074 but I think there were others in there also. the 09ers were also discussing so maybe I am blurring them together. </p>
<p>So YDS, what does your school do?</p>
<p>FAP – congrats to your very bright S on the great job he has done in his class!</p>
<p>scualum, your D gets to sleep till 7 on weekdays? That sounds so luxurious! S is always at school before 7, and often by 6:30 for Jazz Ensemble. He and I are both up by 5:30. That makes it hard to convince him to get 8 hours of sleep – not many 16-year-olds want to go to bed at 9:30. 
But we manage to get about seven usually.</p>
<p>For a girl that is not a morning person, it was heaven when they gave her the choice of starting her day 2nd period and adding on to the end of the day… Her school day goes from 815 to 3 most days as opposed to 730 to 2:00. </p>
<p>May she be lucky again next year :)</p>