Kids, teens need time to fix sleeping patterns for schools

Getting her daughter to sleep early enough to wake up for school has always been a challenge for Belinda Juarez.

As Juarez’s daughter, Samantha, got older, the struggle to get her to get enough sleep grew more difficult.

"With her it’s real hard. She (doesn’t) go to bed until midnight or later," said Juarez, a resident of Sharyland.

But every summer, Juarez has had her daughter, now 17, go to bed earlier than she had been during the last few weeks of vacation.

She also takes her daughter’s cell phone at night so she won’t be tempted to stay up late talking to friends.

"Normally it takes a good month to get back into a good rhythm," Juarez said.

With the new school year just a week away, now is a good time to start preparing children for going to bed and waking up earlier for school, according to sleep experts.

Everyone has a circadian rhythm, a sort of internal clock tells him or her when to go to sleep and when to wake up. During the school year, children are used to going to sleep and waking up around the same time each day,but during the summer they may be allowed to stay up longer. Because they’re going to sleep later, they tend to wake up later, said Dr. Gary Montgomery, director of the sleep center at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

“They’re actually shifting their circadian rhythm,” Montgomery said.

Which is OK during the summer, but once school starts, that shift can cause the daily struggle to get out of bed, he said.

Sleep experts suggest that parents start adjusting the time their children wake up one to two weeks before school starts.

Montgomery suggests parents should wake up their children in increments of one hour before they have been getting up on their own until they’re waking up at the time they need to for school.

He also suggests parents set aside a half-hour to an hour of quiet time for their children before bedtime and dim the lights so that their bodies

will start preparing for sleep.

Another sleep expert, Dr. Richard J. Castriotta, director of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, suggests parents have their children, especially teenagers, stay up a little bit later each night so that the body’s circadian rhythm will readjust to make them tired earlier. 

Exposure to sunlight in the morning also helps the body wake up, the sleep experts said.

If they’re waking up before the sun rises,turn on the lights in the house, Montgomery said.

Elementary school-aged children typically need 10-12 hours of sleep at night; teenagers need about nine to nine and a half hours, Montgomery said.

Many children, especially teenagers, are sleep deprived because school schedules often have them waking up too early. Children who are lacking sleep often display hyperactivity and irritability rather than lethargy, sleep experts said.

Teenagers tend to have later sleep/wake schedules than younger children and adults. But high school schedules often have teens waking up when their bodies normally would be going through the deep rapid eye movement stage of their sleep cycle, Castriotta said.

"Early morning class schedules exacerbate the problem," Castriotta said.

McAllen resident Laura Lubin figured out a simple solution to make her 10-year-old daughter, Dalih, go to sleep earlier: turning off the light.

Like many parents, Lubin said she lets her daughter stay up a bit later during the summer when school is out and there are more hours of daylight.

But during the last couple of weeks of summer vacation, Lubin begins preparing her daughter for waking up earlier for school.

She either has her daughter go to sleep earlier than she has been or she wakes her up earlier so that she’ll be ready to wake up for school. Lubin

said she also bumps up her bed time so she’s prepared to wake up earlier once school starts.

“Just turn off the light, turn off the TV. Eventually they’ll go to sleep,” Lubin said.

Jennifer L. Berghom covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4462.