I am thinking about sleep this morning. My daughter has been fighting a cold, and today I am letting her sleep as long as she needs to. We will do our schoolwork in the afternoon, if need be. I know on a daily basis she gets about an hour more sleep than her public school neighborhood friends who have to be up early to catch the bus. I often wonder if this accounts for my children's happy dispositions? It is well known that adequate sleep promotes good health. How much sleep do your kids get?
pinkpiglet1262007-12-13T08:16:56Z
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My kids are all different. My 9yr old sleeps from 8:30 till 7:00 or so. My 11yr old is often awake till 9:30 and we wake her between 8:30 and 9:00.
My 14 yr old is awake till 10:30 and he's up 8:30 or 9:00 as well.
Their friends are up by 6:30 to get ready for school. It's tough on them because they always seem to be very tired.
I go to public school My bus comes at 6:30 in the morning and the earliest I can ever go to sleep is about 10:30. I am a high school student taking all honors courses and I stay after until about 4 everyday. Usually I don't get home until about 4:30 or 5. When I come home I have to start my HW right away or I will be up even later. The latest I have ever stayed up was 1:30 to get up at 5:50. I never have time for my family or friends, or even to do anything fun during the week. When I am sick, I can't miss a day of school because I will have to make up too much work. Some of my friends, who are on sports teams, don't get home until 5:30/6:00 and when they have a game sometimes they don't get home until 8:00-9:00. A lot of my friends come into school saying they didn't sleep at all that night, or didn't get to bed until 2 in the morning. I hate the hours of my school. My start time is at 7:15 and school ends at 2:03, but in reality the school hours are 7:15-4:00. So if you child gets more than seven hours a sleep at night, then she gets more.
My son is allowed to follow his body's natural rhythm. He's 9, almost 10, and usually sleeps 11 hours a night. He's a night person like me, so we start school later in the morning or in the afternoons. It works so much better for us!
We've had colds running through our family and HS'ing is so nice - no calling the bus and the school to say my DS won't be there - and he can just take all the time he wants to sleep it off - me, too!
My DD is in PS and it's so annoying when she's ill. She just can't go to sleep before 9 or 10 but has to be up at 7 to catch the bus. She's two years younger than her brother but only gets around 9 hrs of sleep. Eventually by Wed or Thurs, she crashes after school - sometimes for 3 or more hours. It's not healthy.
My two teens have to be in bed reading at 9 and lights out is at 9:30. My eldest invariably manages to drag this out til well after 10 most nights. I wake them around 7 AM and they have to be up by 8 and ready for school by 9. I wish I could say they're happy but most of the time the oldest is cranky when he gets up, for at least a half hour. I have noticed a correlation between how late he stays awake and how UGLY he is in the morning though.
I get 8 to 9 hours on an average night. Some nights though I may only get 5, but only under unusual circomstances. I was lucky to get 6 when I was in public school. The way they assign homework and plan your schedule it sometimes felt as though their goal was to deprive you of sleep. And then they stress how important sleep is before tests. I was ALWAYS sick in public school, at least to some degree, and I was never as cheerful as I've been as a home schooler, except maybe in the early years when it was still possible to see family, maybe have some social time, eat dinner, bathe, and still get to bed at a reasonable hour.