Thursday is It’s Cool Being a Parent Day!
One of the coolest things about being a parent is naps. A craze-filled morning, out the door, in the door, stressed about work. A day with my two year-old…is often one of my favorites, but this time that’s not happening – and it’s not her, it’s me. I’m cranky when I haven’t exercised, and I’m allowing the problems of clients and students to subsume me. I love solving problems…of helping others solve theirs. But the imagining of hundreds of scenarios, not to mention the possible research designs and ways to proceed with product development stop me in my tracks. The 1:00 bell rings, a book, a kiss, and whala, silence. At least someone in this house is resting. I watch the branches on the Aspens outside the window sway to the coo’ing of my baby Petra…the other girl in the house. I do more belly breathing.
I took mini naps when I was a surrogate Mama at a boarding school. The teens did too…at times, at least. I didn’t know about my middle school and high school kids in Seattle…students aren’t supposed to sleep in school! Few teens in my recent research study did. We don’t really nap as teens, do we? Should we? Do we as parents? When we do…and when our children do, then, well…we all get some rest.
I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on sleep. There are, though, key studies that examine the impact of school schedules on sleep, and student sleep on academic performance. Most of these studies focus on adolescents whose circadian rhythms change in late puberty due to the change of release times of the sleep hormone melatonin. Edina, Minnesota was the first public school district to alter its school schedule based on the research. The start day for high school students in Edina is 8:30 (instead of its old start time of 7:25 a.m.). What will be the start time for your kids this summer?
Here’s a few websites to get started:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/teens-health/cc00019
http://nysut.org/research/bulletins/981202adolescentsleep.html
http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/sleep-topics/teens-and-sleep
http://www.edina.k12.mn.us/news/reports/laterstart/index.html
But for now, naptime.
Happy resting.
