<p>“4 hrs of sleep; 4 cups of latte; 4.0.”</p>
<p>–(or something like that) from the book “School of Dreams”</p>
<p>At my daughter’s high school, on the day when an IB history paper of great difficulty and importance was due, one girl did not show up for school. The school had no idea where she was. Her parents had no idea where she was. Her friends could not contact her by cell phone or IM. Rumors flew around that she had run away or harmed herself or done some other drastic thing as a result of the enormous stress connected with this paper.</p>
<p>In fact, what happened is that she worked on the paper all night in her family’s basement, where she wouldn’t disturb other family members. She accidentally fell asleep down there shortly before the time when she would normally have left for school and slept through the whole school day. Her parents had no idea she was in the basement, and she was so deeply asleep that she didn’t hear any of the phones ringing.</p>
<p>All-nighters do catch up with you, sometimes in very embarrassing and conspicuous ways.</p>
<p>Oh, oh!! I have a story! (arm raised, waving…)
Son sets his cell phone for 8:00 AM math class. Sometime in the middle of the night, he wakes up, checks the cell phone (he’s kind of a check and double check-type guy), and in his sleepy state, means to set it down on his bedstand but instead drops it into a cup of water. The next morning, he wakes up a half hour after class has begun, puzzled…OMG…why didn’t the alarm sound? Shocked, he finds that his phone has been submerged in water all night…how did that happen!!! He has homework due in this class, so he takes off out the dorm with HW in hand, misses the end of class. Dejected, he starts out toward home, but passes his TA en route. Tells TA the story, TA accepts homework (YAY, TA!) and all is well. God Bless understanding people!</p>
<p>^^I’ll bet all wasn’t well with the cell phone. I killed mine simply by setting my purse down in one of those sinks that turns the water on automatically. By the time I set the rest of my packages down, the purse was full of water.</p>
<p>Water and cell phones don’t mix. Son claims the overnight soak actually caused phone to expand, but I’m still not a believer…</p>
<p>In one of my oldest son’s brainier moments, he “stored” his cell phone in the ice cooler one day at the beach (he was 16 and with a girl- what can I say?). We took the phone up to the branch dealer, and he instructed us to go to the main office, show the phone to the repair staff, tell them nothing other than “the phone doesn’t work” and just play innocent. Being a blonde, I did what he said. The guy took the phone apart, took one look at the battery and just laughed at me…“ma’m, how long did this phone marinate?”</p>
<p>OK, back to the thread…</p>
<p>Cell phones and water: battery packs have a little patch on them that turns pink if the phone has been immersed. You can’t hide.</p>
<p>However, I ran my phone and TallSon’s phones both through the washer and drier – at different times – and both recovered fully and have gone on to live long, functional lives. As long as it was just water and not something full of sugar, the phone can recover.</p>
<p>the only reason im surviving this year (with a gpa 1.0 higher than ever before!) is because i have periods 1,2, and 3 off and so i sleep until 10 for my first class at 11. </p>
<p>other years i was seriously sleep deprived which affected my motivation to do homework.</p>
<p>Wow! Thank you for all of your thoughtful advice! I was really struck by the New York article, which persuasively makes the argument that regularly getting enough sleep must be the priority. (For those of you without the time to read the whole linked article, it argues that there is permanent cognitive damage for teens who do not get enough sleep and measurable short-term impairment from sleep deprivation).
I think the comments about reviewing the level of detail that she’s doing on all of her assignments are exactly right and I think she is not managing her time efficiently. I think she will need to scale back further on after-school ECs and start learning which assignments need the highest level of detail (probably math) and which can be executed more quickly (probably history).
I’m glad to hear that we’re not alone.</p>
<p>D stayed up late all the time, and found that on days when she got more sleep, she was more tired than on days when she got too little. But, at times, it did catch up with her, and she slept a lot on Saturday nights until Sunday. Saturdays she usually had some competition or something. I know she never made up the sleep, but it helped. And yes, we did have the talk about setting priorities, but she was a perfectionist, and had to do her best on everything! Senior year, I let her take late arrival, and it made that year so much easier for her.</p>
<p>We never had set bedtimes for our kids after they hit 9th grade. Guess I figured they would figure out if they were tired and crabby the next day, then they should go to bed earlier.</p>
<p>That said, I have 3 who all have very different sleep needs and patterns. One will want to sleep late no matter how early he goes to bed, one likes late nights but really needs that 8 hours, the last one has gotten by on minimal sleep ever since his toddler years. Now in college, that #3 child never gets more than 5-6 hours/night and says he feels terrible if he sleeps in on the weekend and gets 8 hours.</p>
<p>during my last 2 years in high school, it was not uncommon at all to be up after 1am doing work. And before big assignments were due, a large percentage of my IB class would still be up, and sometimes discussing things and comparing progress on AIM. I think I maxed out (minimized out?) one week with 15 hours of sleep from monday night to thursday night. I only ever pulled a full all nighter once, where I worked all night, printed my assignment, changed my clothes, and got in the car to drive to school. For extended periods (multiple weeks) my sleep schedule would be 2-3 hour nap during the afternoon / evening, and then 3-4 hours at night. It wasn’t good, but it got the job done. I know it was similiar for many friends who were taking the full IB load. I don’t think my work suffered as a result of the sleep schedule.</p>
<p>Wait til she gets to college! Our son is putting in insane hours this semester!!! One week he pulled 3 consecutive all niters with mid day naps.</p>
<p>I went all four years of high school on 6 hours of sleep a night.</p>
<p>I don’t even think this should be a question. If your daughter doesn’t finish all her homework before her assigned “bed time”, what are you going to do? Send her into class with incomplete work, feeling embarrassed? I understand your concerns about her health and getting a solid eight hours a night, but preventing her from finishing the work assigned to her strikes me as naive and irresponsible. </p>
<p>While she may not be as cheery and gracious the following day, she will ultimately be blessed with the rewards that come out of long school nights (assuming the work isn’t mindless busy work). Namely, an exponential increase in her intellectual skills and ability, good grades, and improved self-image.</p>
<p>The mother of one of my daughter’s friends did tell them to go to bed rather than finish their homework. Sleep was their priority over hw - they felt that if the kid needed to stay up too late to finish it, it was excessive and unreasonable. I know this because my daughter stayed with these friends when we brought her brother to college and she was in 10th grade. She was taking a challenging AP History class and was not a speed reader, and they discouraged her from staying up late to do all of her work (but she did it anyway).</p>
<p>By the time a student is an upperclassman in high school, I feel that the responsibility for deciding on a bedtime and finding the balance between sleep and other things belongs to the kid. I can think of exceptions to this - a child with a medical condition that requires a specified amount of sleep, kids with poor impulse control, etc. However, I think most 16 yos are capable of managing their time and deciding when it’s time to go to bed. They’ll certainly be making those decisions without parental input in college.</p>
<p>If someone is crabby in our house due to lack of sleep, they can choose between keeping a lid on it or retreating to their room - taking it out on Mom is not an option 
.</p>
<p>One of my d’s friends, a brilliant girl who aced the PSAT, scored 570 on the SAT math section because she actually fell asleep during the test. Now that’s sleep deprivation!</p>
<p>“One of my d’s friends, a brilliant girl who aced the PSAT, scored 570 on the SAT math section because she actually fell asleep during the test.”</p>
<p>OMG, I would have cancelled the test immediately!</p>
<p>I don’t know why she didn’t, because let me tell you, she is one bright girl. She did retake the SAT last Saturday. I don’t know if her June score was high enough to move from NMSF to finalist - hope this last one did the trick.</p>
<p>My son, as I mentioned earlier, is the sort who stays up late several nights in a row and then crashes. In the crashed-out state, he has been known to turn off multiple alarm clocks (including the one that he keeps on the other side of the room), flop back on the bed, and fall asleep again. In such instances, he wakes up later with no memory of ever having turned off the alarms.</p>
<p>During his sophomore year of college, when he lived in a single, he once did this on the day of an exam. He turned off his alarms and fell asleep again, only to wake up just as the exam was about to start – on the other side of campus. In a panic, he grabbed his stuff and tried to run out the door of his room, only to discover that he couldn’t get the door open. It was stuck closed (presumably it had been warped by the humidity). So he called the Building Services people, and they extricated him from the room and provided him with a copy of their work order, which had the date and time stamped on it. Of course, by that time, the exam was over. However, he was able to use this work order to convince the TA that he had missed the exam for a reason beyond his control, and the TA allowed him to take a make-up exam the next day.</p>
<p>Sometimes I think that some sort of higher power is watching over this kid.</p>
<p>I actually worry a little about my younger son. He’s been known to sleepwalk on a few occasions. I’ve had complete conversations with him in the middle of the night, when I’ve known he was actually asleep, and I’ve tried to tell him he’s sleeping, but he doesn’t listen. One night he walked downstairs and announced he was going to the neighbor’s house. Asked why, he claimed he needed to apologize to them. It took a few minutes for me to realize he was completely asleep! I literally had to bar the door because NOTHING was stopping him from going to the neighbors. I kept saying, “You’re asleep, you’re sleepwalking, go back to bed…” but I guess people in that state just don’t understand.</p>
<p>I was curious as to what he felt like he needed to apologize for, but the next day he didn’t remember too much.</p>