The Lost Hour

Conventional Wisdom
The fact that kids of all ages now average an hour less of sleep each night than they did 30 years ago is no big deal.

NurtureShock Wisdom
The reduction in sleep times is having negative effects in many areas - including academic performance, emotional stability, obesity, and ADHD.

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Because children’s brains are a work in progress, the loss of sleep time affects them differently than it does adults. For one thing, tired children have trouble remembering their lessons, because their neurons become less able to form new synaptic connections. Sleep loss makes the body less able to extract glucose from the blood, and it’s the prefrontal cortex that suffers the most from the reduction in energy - resulting in increased difficulty in paying attention. Sleep loss also increases the hormones that signal hunger and stimulate the body to make fat, resulting in a tendency to obesity. Another area of the brain that takes a hit from sleep deprivation is the hippocampus - the area of the brain that processes positive memories - resulting in gloomy kids. And the list goes on.

Here’s an excerpt from this chapter discussing what happens when schools push back the time classes start in the morning. (p. 36)

“The best known of these is Edina, Minnesota, an affluent suburb of Minneapolis, which changed its high school start times from 7:25 to 8:30. The results were startling, and it affected the brightest kids the most. In the year preceding the time change, math/verbal SAT scores for the top 10% of Edina’s 1600 students averaged 683/605. A year later, the top 10% averaged 739/761. In case you’re too drowsy to do that math, getting another hour of sleep boosted math SAT scores of Edina’s best and Brightest up 56 points, and their verbal SAT score a whopping 156 points. (‘Truly flabbergasting,‘ gasped a stunned and disbelieving Brian O’Reilly, the College Board’s Executive Director for SAT Program relations, when he heard the results.) And the students reported higher levels of motivation and lower levels of depression. In short, an hour more of sleep improved students’ quality of life.“

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