<p>the data collected for this research is somewhat old (mid - 1990’s), although, I imagine results are still true.</p>
<p>“Middle- and high-schoolers whose parents don’t require them to be in bed before midnight on school nights are 42% more likely to be depressed than teens whose parents require a 10 p.m. or earlier bedtime. And teens who are allowed to stay up late are 30% more likely to have had suicidal thoughts in the past year.”</p>
<p>No big surprise…but after failing miserably with first child… hoping to do better with younger child.</p>
<p>We require a 10:00 bedtime for HS kid…but…enforcing has been difficult. Not watching TV or doing any other specific activity, just “dawdling”</p>
<p>I used to just carry kid to bed…but my child could carry me to bed now…so it doesn’t work anymore!</p>
<p>Anyone here try to force a teenager to go to sleep?? nice try…we attempt a 10:00 but it’s usually closer to 10:30-11…</p>
<p>Maybe it would be more beneficial to forward this article to school districts around the country who insist on keeping HS first periods at 7:15 am, rather than rearranging busing schedules to postpone HS starting times…</p>
<p>And this only backs up what I have been preaching for years - that many of the emotional turmoil we see in college students is the result of sleep deprivation. I have been talking to my colleagues who work in college counseling and health centers about this issue. I wish during orientation we would hit on this - and while many kids would ignore the warning - when they did hit a rough patch, perhaps they would recall they had been told that lack of sleep can wreck havoc with the ability to cope and take corrective measures.</p>
<p>Workinprog–so true, and the social pressures to stay up late are compounded by the huge increase in reading and work at the college level. While some colleges clearly remind freshman that sleep is necessary, they also pile on impossible loads of reading, while grad school requirements urge intense undergrad extracurriculars. And they are so surprised when the suicides occur?</p>
<p>The reason this is so is because the average adolescent’s body requires at least 8 hours of sleep per night, and sleep deprivation even in small amounts leads to increased stress which eventually leads to depression.
We college students know all about sleep deprivation. :)</p>
<p>College students can usually arrange their lives to allow for ample sleep. It’s high school students who have to get up at dawn and whose bodies and social lives aren’t ready to switch off at 9 pm.</p>
<p>One of the joys of college, as far as my daughter is concerned, is that you don’t have to go through life sleep-deprived, the way you did in high school.</p>
<p>I wonder if perhaps some of these kids have sleep disorders. For a long time I assumed my insomnia (I can’t fall asleep) was a symptom of my depression. But over the years I noticed that the insomnia came back first, then the depression.</p>
<p>Now when my insomnia acts up, I’m proactive and, thus far, have kept the depression at bay.</p>
<p>D takes melatonin and faithfully goes to bed no later than 10 pm. Regardless of her schoolwork. I look at some of the kids on CC who are taking a bazillion AP classes and curing cancer, running student council, playing five sports and helping little old ladies cross the street and I don’t know how they get adequate sleep.</p>
<p>At our high school, one of the perks of being a senior is the option to have late arrival or early release…you schedule study hall 1st or 4th block, but do not have to be in the building. </p>
<p>D2 will have late arrival for 3/4 of the year next year, so she can get to school at 8:50 am instead of 7:20. A perfect situation for her…she is usually up until 11:00 pm - midnight, no matter how hard I try to get her to bed sooner. Her body just is geared to being a night owl (which is hard because the rest of the family are morning people).</p>
<p>I guess I’ll offer a different viewpoint - once my kids were in high school, we left their bedtimes pretty much entirely up to them. If they’d wanted to be in the family room watching television at midnight or in the kitchen at 1 AM whipping up a batch of pancakes, we’d have sent them to their rooms - but if they’d chosen to stay awake up there on a school night, we wouldn’t have intervened. For several reasons, the primary one being that we thought they were old enough to manage this aspect of their own time. And they did learn quickly how much sleep they needed to be functional the next day.</p>
<p>I’ll agree with those who point out that part of the problem is how early school starts for many high school kids. In order to make the bathroom rotation/bus schedule work, the oldest of our three always had to be up at 6 AM. With a part-time job (sometimes 2), nightly ECs, and a full load of honors/AP classes, a 10 PM bedtime was not in the cards. This isn’t playing 5 sports or curing cancer, just a reasonably active high school life. My kids could have decided to give up some of the above in favor of more sleep, but they didn’t want to. If I’d tried to force the issue, they’d have thought I was nuts.</p>
<p>Life is better with enough sleep. Lots of adults and older adolescents just aren’t in situations where they can get it regularly. I’ll wait for less ambiguous evidence that it causes depression before deciding that parents of high schoolers should enforce not only bedtime but sleep time. I never had much luck with that with my kids, even when they were babies!</p>