If it makes you wake up to pee, that’s a negative effect. 
OK I picked up some 1mg tablets.
We’ll try it— probably next weekend when any negative effects won’t effect school.
Thanks.
If she’s up for it, try it on Friday evening, timing to about 1hour before she usually gets sleepy and then go to bed immediately even with books/screens. Then on Saturday time it to 1hour before she would like to fall asleep (which is presumably earlier than when she starts feels sleepy).
One of the issues I have with a late start for school is that it will push everything else back, including sports and homework. And no one wins, especially the kids and their families.
I already deal with a ballet teacher who doesn’t respect anyone’s time but her own (one more week left!), and this would mean class/rehearsal going on well past when everyone says kids should be in bed anyway.
And then when is studying/homework getting done, if they are getting home around 4 or 5 (depending on the mandated number of hours in class), going to an extra curricular (which is healthy to have) and getting home “late” anyway?
I predict…in the not to distant future…we will look back on the demands and expectations placed on our developing teenagers…and see child abuse. Socially accepted, socially admired…child abuse.
They used to be called ‘extra curricular activities’. EXTRA as in something you did if you wanted to go outside the norm. Now they are called ‘co-curricular activities’. It’s expected. We simply didn’t allow our kids to fall into this lifestyle. Inspire of being in the the middle of crazy - Silicon Valley - where tiger parents are the majority - we resisted. And somehow, the kids are alright. They have great lives. And they have memories of grandparents, time at the lake, long family trips, full summers with relatives abroad…hey…they even remember spending time after school…doing NOTHING.
NOTHING!!?? Goodness, how do you list THAT on a college app?
Does ANYONE here think that the homework burden is a problem here? I thought the amount of work assigned at our high school was ridiculously excessive. I am a procrastinator, but in high school I had to stay up till 11 PM to finish homework only once in 4 years. My kids routinely stayed up past midnight or later to get their work done, and so did everyone they knew in the honors track. D2 then spent a year at a high school in Germany (college-bound), and had almost no homework assigned. There were also only 2 tests per term per subject. The whole thing seemed so much saner and healthier — and nobody there believed my D when she told them what her high school was like.
Some high schools follow the new trend where being a good employee means “spending a lots of hours even if they’re pointless”. And so a good student is one who does lots of homework. It also applies to teachers - in that view, a good teacher corrects lots of HW. Finally, if the teacher’s pay and promotion are tied to the AP results, they’ll do what they can to protect against student failure.
Rationally there’s no need for so much mandatory hw unless a student is struggling. For example, in an AP class, after a few ‘outlining’ assignments, the students should be assumed to know how to do it ; it shouldnt be assigned and graded, but assumed. The percentage of the grade should rely little on HW and more on tests and presentations (closer to what you’d find in college). One graded assignment per week (quiz, presentation, HW, test…) is plenty. Everything else should be ungraded.
That would decrease the amount of assignments and the number of HW hours.
The German gymnasium does it well. As does re British 6th form college and the French lycée. Students don’t suffer academically :).
In the current situation, top students have to learn how to prioritize and drop less essential tasks, even if their grade will suffer by 0,01%…
I think some teachers are absolutely unreasonable when it comes to homework… as though doing 30 problems will somehow force understanding in a way that doing 5 won’t.
But I think that electronics are probably at least as big an issue with a good number of kids. As are a huge number of ECs
Yes, electronics play a part, but it’s not just the electronics. My best teacher in high school used to lament that she could only give us 30 minutes of homework per night— otherwise parents would object. Somewhere along the way, parents started wanting more homework— when private schools in NYC talked about limiting homework, parents objected, saying that the move would make their children less competitive for college.
AP classes are insane. They pretend to be college level courses. What college level course, even a survey course, would try to cover the whole of a subject in massive detail in a year — and then have a final covering 2 semesters? What college course expects students to cover a significant portion of the work over the summer? Also in what college would you have 40 hours of classes interfering with study time? Not to mention that the quantity of work is gratuitous (with respect to the exam) in at least some cases. My D1 took AP bio and the teacher never got around to teaching animal physiology—20% of the syllabus. D1 studied the subject over 5 days using only the AP review book and pulled off a 5 on the exam. She is smart, but she shouldn’t have been able to do that. Clearly it would have been possible to do well on the AP without using the huge, densely detailed textbook that is taught in the course.
“Melvin123: recently went to a presentation by a doctor who specializes in sleep issues, particularly in children. She has been going around the country advocating that schools start their day later, around 8:30 or 9 if possible, because of all the studies that show when adolescents get their best sleep, and the studies that show the high correlation between sleep deprivation, car accidents, and depression.”
I can’t believe many schools are not acknowledging this yet. We were home schoolers into high school, so my kids were always well rested. But even the charter one attended years ago started the school day at 9 M-Thursday, and at 10 am on Fridays. It was awesome.
"Dietz: I predict…in the not to distant future…we will look back on the demands and expectations placed on our developing teenagers…and see child abuse. Socially accepted, socially admired…child abuse.
They used to be called ‘extra curricular activities’. EXTRA as in something you did if you wanted to go outside the norm. Now they are called ‘co-curricular activities’. It’s expected."
You are right. They are expected to do far too much and maintain perfect GPA’s. Ridiculous. We just went to school, did our best, and maybe played a sport.
I’ve always thought that if there were studies that showed that the “ natural” sleeping pattern for teens was to go to bed early and wake early and that there are fewer car accidents if school started very early, schools would be all over that. Quickly making changes and haranguing families about it.
But because studies show that teens actually do better sleeping later AND this is something they LIKE , schools can’t get over an unconscious puritanical mindset that if the kids like it it just HAS to be bad for them. I had one school admin tell me he “ didn’t believe those studies” and tried to come up with some wild conspiracy their ( it’s all masterminded by big corporations) to justify his position.
I just wanted to point out to the parents with children using screens late at night that Apple products and probably others have “night shift” which reduces the blue content of the screen in the evening.
My daughter’s school had a meeting two years ago to explain the research that led them to reduce homework. There were still a decent number of parents who objected to the reduced homework load.