When I was a kid, my favorite pillowcase had a picture of Charlie Brown’s sister Sally saying, “I hate to go to bed at night, and I hate to get up in the morning.” That sentiment has long been true for me and and my daughter Louisa.
Louisa never went to bed easily and now that she’s a teenager she seems physically unable to fall asleep before 11, even if she gets ready for bed at 9. The good news is, she’s a normal adolescent. Research in the 1990s shows that teens naturally stay up until 11 p.m. — even if they’re exhausted — and wake up at about 8 a.m.
“You can send these kids to bed anytime you want, but they won’t go to sleep until their biological clock says it’s time,” says Dr. Mark Mahowald, director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center at Hennepin County Medical Center.
The bad news is, our society doesn’t accommodate this shift in sleep patterns that occurs as kids go through puberty. To get to school on time, students have to get up before their bodies are rested. Homework, jobs, activities, and family obligations are crammed into the day, and access to computers and phones makes it more difficult for teens to wind down once they get to bed.
“Our adolescent population is profoundly sleep deprived,” Mahowald says. “Many parents hesitate to let kids sleep in on weekends because they see it as laziness, or depression. But if somebody is sleeping in, it’s to replace a debt.”
According to the National Sleep Foundation, adolescents require 8½ to 9¼ hours of sleep a night, but only about 15 percent get that much. Teens with a sleep deficit are more likely to be moody and irritable, be late to school, and use caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. Their grades and health suffer and they have a greater risk of falling asleep at the wheel.
Since the mid-1990s, districts in Minnesota and across the country have decided that it makes sense to start school later for older students. Edina High School paved the way in 1996 by switching its start time from 7:25 to 8:30. Other districts, like Minneapolis, followed.
“Research says if you can start adolescents a little later, their academic performance will be better. That’s the driving piece of why school districts are doing it,” says Charlie Kyte, executive director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators.
A University of Minnesota study reported improvements in attendance and alertness in both Minneapolis and Edina, particularly during the first two hours of the day. Students also got five or more extra hours of sleep per week.
Bus scheduling is one reason some districts have resisted changing start times. Kyte says the difficulty of making changes depends on the size of the district and the number of routes. But, he says, parents’ concerns can convince administrators to accommodate all students’ sleep needs.
Mahowald says changing school start times is a good start, but he believes many people still aren’t willing to accept that there are consequences for operating on fewer hours of sleep.
“Our whole society feels sleep deprivation is a badge of honor. We don’t brag about how much sleep we get, we brag about pulling an all-nighter. We’ve elevated sleep deprivation as a positive aspect of character, without acknowledging that any degree of sleep deprivation can impair performance,” he says. “It will take decades for our society to realize that sleep is a biological imperative, and is not negotiable.”
