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Children need sufficient sleep to grow and learn well. But every parent knows how difficult it is to get the children to get that sleep, especially sending them to bed while mom and dad are still up. And once children are in their teens, this becomes even more difficult, even though they still need that sleep time. In the United States it is even worse, as school starts earlier for older children and they sometimes have long school bus trips before that. So it is not uncommon for children to wake up at 6. With 10 hours of required sleep, calculate when they should have gone to bed...
Jay Stewart uses the American Time Use Survey to determine the factors of sleep time for children. First, when school is in session, and when it is a school day, they go to bed 38 minutes later and wake up 72 minutes earlier. This lost half hour accumulates quickly through the week and leads to sleepy heads by Friday. Second, while child development often depends on the mother, in this case sleep patterns during school are not influenced by maternal labor supply.
Then, who is to blame? It is certainly not school homework, of which American school children get little. Is it TV? For sure, it is difficult to drag the children away from the monkey box when the parents are glued to it. Is it over-emphasis on school sports? For many children and parents, sports have priority over academics (even in college). Maybe cutting down on those many hours of daily football training would do the children some good (and besides, there are still more academic scholarships for college that sports ones).
Jay Stewart uses the American Time Use Survey to determine the factors of sleep time for children. First, when school is in session, and when it is a school day, they go to bed 38 minutes later and wake up 72 minutes earlier. This lost half hour accumulates quickly through the week and leads to sleepy heads by Friday. Second, while child development often depends on the mother, in this case sleep patterns during school are not influenced by maternal labor supply.
Then, who is to blame? It is certainly not school homework, of which American school children get little. Is it TV? For sure, it is difficult to drag the children away from the monkey box when the parents are glued to it. Is it over-emphasis on school sports? For many children and parents, sports have priority over academics (even in college). Maybe cutting down on those many hours of daily football training would do the children some good (and besides, there are still more academic scholarships for college that sports ones).
6 comments:
I'm afraid I don't quite understand the leap to "Is it over-emphasis on school sports?". What does emphasis on school sports have to do with lack of sleep?
I mean that school sports take up a lot of time after "regular" school, from training to events and travel.
Ah, thank you. I would be surprised if sports were more of a contributing factor than TV/electronic devices. Many would also be hesitant to say that children need to do less exercise, as this conflicts with the usual public health message.
Sleep in general is given a fairly low priority by all - not just children. In fact, getting by lack of sleep is worn almost as a badge of pride by some - much like working long hours, being stressed, etc.
Perhaps it is a reflection of cultural norms in thsi case?
Parents do complain at school meetings about the lack of sleep of their children. In my experience, the response was to cut down on homework, not on sports. Due to funding cuts, there are fewer school buses and ours now shows up even earlier. We now drive our kids to school.
Last time I checked we have a problem with child obesity, so cutting down on sports is not really something we should do. As a matter of fact, one would expect children to fall asleep much earlier if they're exhausted.
But indeed, in general I do agree that many parents tend to fill up their kids' schedules too much (not necessarily with sports but with all kinds of extracurricular activities), which probably leads to less "fun time" (e.g. playing, watching TV, etc.) in the afternoon, which shifts the whole schedule and thus children go to bed later. In any case, it would be interesting to see some research on the actual reasons behind this.
I am not disagreeing. But I think very few of the obese ones are involved in after-school sports, except for American football players who are encouraged to bulk up.
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