Adolescent sleep
Our Senior students have now completed the Internal Assessment examinations for Unit 3. It would be unrealistic to presume that throughout the past week, all students have been getting their recommended nine hours sleep each night. The topic for this section of the newsletter highlights the value of sleep and the damage caused by sleep deprivation. In our January professional learning days, our guest presenter, Dr Joann Lukins, reminded staff – “if you are feeling stressed, it's important to sleep, eat and hydrate well”.
A Harvard study reveals that 90% of people are viewing TVs, mobile phones and computers in the hour before bedtime, preventing the body’s natural wind-down pattern prior to falling asleep. According to a major survey by the US National Sleep Foundation, the worst activities are video games, using mobiles and surfing the internet. Dr Charles Czeisler, of Harvard Medical School, said: "Artificial light exposure between dusk and the time we go to bed suppresses the release of the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin, enhances alertness and shifts normal sleep patterns to a later hour".
Clinical psychologist Andrew Fuller recommends that teenagers need more than nine hours of sleep because the adolescent brain is doing so much development. Fuller also advises that “just because you slept ten hours one night doesn't mean you can get away with only sleeping six hours the next night. Students who don't get enough sleep have to work much harder to do well at school”. His advice is to remember there is no such thing as a sleep bank.
Fuller refers to a recent Columbia University study which found that teenagers who got to sleep after midnight had a 24% higher risk of depression than those in bed before 10.00pm. Those with later bedtimes were also 20% more likely to have suicidal thoughts.
Getting the zzzz's
Adolescents eat more and they sleep less. They have a preference for sleeping and waking later than they did when they were children. Adolescents need more sleep than they did as children — around nine and a quarter hours. Most teenagers' brains are not ready to wake up until eight or nine in the morning. Teenagers who are sleep deprived do less well at school and are more prone to feelings of sadness and hopelessness.
Feeling stressed
The decision-making ability of adolescents may be more vulnerable to disruptions and the stresses and strains of everyday living than that of adults. They may also respond more strongly to stressful events physiologically with greater blood pressure and cardiac output response than children.
Adolescents are often sleep deprived which may in turn increase vulnerability to stress. They may have more negative life experiences (friendship changes, alterations in romantic liaisons, schoolwork) that they tend to view more negatively and have less control over. This may well increase their sense of helplessness.
The more negative life events an adolescent has, the more likely they are to engage in problem behaviours and the less likely they are to engage in a wide range of positive activities.
Most learning doesn't happen at school!
Children spend only 15% of their time at school. They spend more time asleep (33%) than they do at school. Most of their time (52%) is at home, awake, mucking around, playing, and learning about life and it's what they do with that time that is important.
Most of their future learning also won't occur in school.
An estimated 70% of the jobs that will exist in the year 2040 do not exist now. Knowledge is doubling every three years. Fifty years ago a high school graduate left school knowing about 75% of what they would need to know in their working life — today's high school graduate will leave knowing about 2%!
Acknowledgement: theparentswebsite.com.au/andrew-fuller-depression-proofing-your-kids/