Healthy Sleep Patterns

Today's children, as a whole, are not getting enough sleep. They are overworked and overpressured. Sleep is often the first thing to drop out of a busy kid's schedule. Our teenagers (and younger children) shouldn't need caffeine and other stimulants just to "get by" and make it through the day (neither should adults, but that's a separate issue).

Studies have been shown that when teenagers are allowed to follow their natural rhythms, they sleep in later than when school normally starts. It's been shown that these "late morning hours" are the most important hours for teens' health. The quality of sleep during these hours is significantly higher than the hours before. Some schools are using this research to start their schools later in the morning. I read about one high school last year that found their students were healthier and scoring higher on tests by just pushing the school start time back by an hour or so.

A few interesting articles:

• New York Magazine's October 7, 2007 "Snooze or Lose" article
• The Star.com's October 27, 2007 "Toronto schools will let students sleep in" article
• Science World's March 6, 1996 "Dozing at your desk?" article
• Stanford's "Adolescent Sleep" information
• Washington Post's January 6, 2006 "Schools Waking Up to Teens' Unique Sleep Needs" article
  

Drowsiness is also dangerous! 20+% of serious car accidents are caused from a driver being drowsy. This is serious. Tired driving can be even more dangerous than drunk driving, and we all know how dangerous that is!

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My family's two-fold solution to the learning and sleep dilemma involve Radical Unschooling.

1. We Radically Unschool our children's education.
2. We Radically Unschool our children's sleeping.

What this means on a day-to-day basis is that our children have very flexible schedules. We encourage them to sleep when they are tired, do fun things when they are awake, and rest quietly (with or without us) when they are drowsy. We've seen first hand how solid learning often happens during the wee hours of the morning (all four of us are at our "most productive" from ~8PM-2AM). We purposefully schedule as few activities as possible before 1PM. The kids often sleep until 11AM or 12PM, sometimes later (especially if we've had a busy day/night, the day before). We're noticing that our older daughter is needing even more sleep lately as she's been growing about an inch a month for the past few months. We allow her to listen to her body and, in turn, she's getting plenty of sleep.

We don't have a "bedtime" for our kids. It just isn't needed, nor is it conducive to learning. It is baffling to me when parents regularly stop their children from learning, just to go to sleep.

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To give a point of view on sleep and adults, Dr. McDougall (whom I adore) suggests that adults consider using well planned sleep deprivation as a tool to cure depression and insomnia. I understand his point of view, but as an active adult with two young children, I still need to average 8 hours a night. (I also need enough quality sleep in order to induce lucid dreaming). :) Maybe I'll need less when I'm older.

Here are a few of Dr. McDougall sleep articles:
"Sleep Like a Baby -- Lessons from my Grandson on How to Cure Insomnia"
"Pharmaceutical Companies Promote Sleeping Sickness"
"A Natural Cure for Depression"