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What time does your high school student wake up?


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DS and I are trying to decide on a start time for the 9th grade year, and we are curious:

 

What time does your high school student wake up?  

 

That's the key question, but if you care to elaborate I would love to know more about your student's morning routine and also how many hours of sleep your teen needs/gets.

 

My teens have always needed 10+ hours of sleep.  Needing it and getting it are two different things, though...

 

ETA:  I didn't know how to make a poll  :tongue_smilie:

 

 

 

 

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My son was awful - getting up naturally at 11. He would set an alarm and get up for his DE classes, but always ate breakfast running out the door. My daughter naturally wakes up around 8:30, but likes her morning time and sets an alarm on class days so she can get up and enjoy a cup of coffee and a nice breakfast. My 8th grader is now starting to sleep in, but she likes the mornings with an early to start because she likes to be done early. 

 

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I've always read that teens really need that morning sleep for growth and brain development.  So I have her turn her lights out at midnight and she is usually up between 9 and 10 in the morning.  Although 3 times a week she does need to be up earlier 6, 7 and 8 because of early morning things.  I do notice that when she gets less sleep she tends to be more cranky than on days she gets plenty of rest.

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Unless we have an appointment to keep, I generally let them sleep until they naturally wake up.  The only exception has been my oldest who would become nocturnal if left to her own devices.  Since the rest of our family operates on daylight hours, it wouldn't work well for her to be waking up as we went to sleep.  I usually made her get up by 10 or 11.  She's an adult now and sets her own hours unless I need her to do something.

 

One of my girls naturally gets up around 7:30.  (she's the first of us in bed every night too, around 9-10).  One gets up around 9:30.  She stays up until around 11 or 12.  The nocturnal one is usually awake until the wee hours of the morning, no matter what time she has to get up.   This has not affected her ability to show up for class at college, or be at work at 8AM over the summer.  She usually crashes at the end of the week and catches up.  

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Dd1 is up with morning practice 4-5 times a week (4:40 am alarm, leaves the house by 5 am). Ds2 is usually hauled out of bed around 8 with a start of school work around 9 am. Otherwise he is not finished by his late afternoon activities.

 

Bedtime is early for dd1 and later (10:30/11 pm) for ds2.

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Ds would get up between 11 and 3pm. He's a night owl by nature. In fact, he's quite jovial at 3 am. I've also been in school for the last two years of his high school career. Mornings were my school time, one year online, the next year on campus. He flips his routine around and is now going to bed between 12 and 2am and getting up around 9-10. He's preparing for our college schedule, which means leaving the house at 8am. 

 

If I had other kids or needed to have dinner on the table by a certain hour, I'd probably want him up by 11 at the LATEST, so we could get through most of the school day before evening activities started. 

 

He's very much like my dad who is also a night owl. My dad worked 2 -10pm most of his career. 

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My dd needs lots of sleep: 10 hours give or take. She would stay up late and sleep in if her activities were not affected. As it is, once the semester gets into full swing she needs to start school work at 8 am to be able to do everything she's hoping to do. 

 

Her online classes start at 8 am or 9 am, depending on the day. The last class ends between 8pm and 11pm, depending on the day. (Thanks to time zones.)

Her ECs will happen in-between.  Ideally ECs would be after her classes, but that's not possible with the classes she's taking.

 

So the goal is wake up around 7 am and bedtime as close to 9 or 10 pm as possible. 

 

It all works on the time management spreadsheet she made. Check back with me in a couple months about the reality....

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That's a lot of early risers!  My ps dd of course gets up super-early at about 6:30am.

 

But my homeschooled dd - last year it was whenever she had to.  In the fall on Tu/Th she had a DE class at 9am, but her ride picked her up at 7:30.  In the spring on Tu/Th her DE class started at 8am, so about the same.  On M/W all year she had an online math class at 11? I think - she'd usually roll up in bed in her jammies and log into the class.   On Friday she didn't have a class, so whenever she woke up.  She tends to go to bed on the late side.  Trying to get her to 'start the day' earlier on days she doesn't have an outside class or enforcing a 'bedtime' would be as effective as knocking my head against the wall.

 

This fall I have her signed up for outside classes at 9 or 9:30 M-Th to have a more even start to her days.

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My 14 yo has a natural wake up time of about 9:30-10:00, but we have agreed that starting next week he will be setting his alarm and getting school work started by 8:30. He has made this decision because he doesn't want to be working on school past 3:30 or so in the afternoon. He feels very demoralized when he feels that he has no escape from school in the afternoon.

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My DD gets up at 630 via an alarm clock (although it went off at 615 this morning). She has to take her Adderrall by 7 or she won't sleep that night. She gets up early enough to have breakfast before the meds or she can't eat breakfast.  A long time ago we determined that she had to be up and functioning before I was because I was suffering serious insomnia so I was extra cranky in the morning.  When we added her morning grumblings, school days really started off poorly.

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My oldest was an early riser. He got up at 6:00 every morning until his senior year. That year we changed it to 7:00.

 

The first two years of high school dd got up at 7:00-7:30. This year we've made it 8:00. She has been a competitive gymnast since she was 5. Now she also has a job at a local pharmacy. We could never do late afternoon school, there were other things to do and places to be. Getting up late just didn't work with that. I've always tried to fit their schedules to them though.

 

I don't think what time other people's kids get up matters at all. What matters is what schedule works best for your family.

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DD would naturally get up between 10 and noon, but that just doesn't work with all she wants to do.  On weekends we do let her sleep that late usually unless something is going on.  She is supposed to go to bed at 9, with lights out at 10.  She needs about 9-10 hours of sleep at night, but she typically gets about 7.  On school days she needs to be up and ready to go (chores done, breakfast eaten, shower taken, ..) by 9 am.  She tries to roll out of bed about 8:45, but then is running late a lot of the time.  If she didn't have so many late afternoon/evening activities we could adjust her schedule to start later.

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We start school at 8am in order to get everything done and still allow the time for his job and his sports activities.

If he wants to work two afternoons, have martial arts classes four evenings a week, and leave at 3pm one day a week to travel to a special gym in the city two hours away, school needs to start in the morning.

 

Plus, the adults leave the house to go to work. We learned that it's better to make sure he is actually up before the last parent leaves.

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Well, dd slept till 10:30 today - I woke her up before I left the house at 8 but she fell back asleep  :laugh: .  She's another that seems to need double-digit sleep hours every night. I'd like to have her up at 8 to start school at 9, but we aren't there yet. I haven't decided whether to inch her backwards or whether to just cold turkey start getting her up earlier in the morning.

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My 14 yo has a natural wake up time of about 9:30-10:00, but we have agreed that starting next week he will be setting his alarm and getting school work started by 8:30. He has made this decision because he doesn't want to be working on school past 3:30 or so in the afternoon. He feels very demoralized when he feels that he has no escape from school in the afternoon.

 

We also start school at 8:30 so my dc can have an afternoon break.

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Last year DD14's band class was at 8am and she had to be up early for that.  She would eat breakfast after class and then start her schoolwork around 9:30.

 

This year, she doesn't have to be there until 10:30am (Yes!), so she plans to be downstairs and groggy by 9am for breakfast and to start stuff that just needs to be read.  After she gets back from band (11:30 or noon), she will start her regular school work and music practice.

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Mine get up when either a) the younger siblings make so much noise they can't stand it anymore or b) I realize they are still sleeping and I go in and steal their covers and insist they get up.  Either way they are seldom out of bed before 9.  It's usually closer to 10 before I notice.  They go to bed between 10-11 or whenever I notice they are still awake (I'm a night owl as are they) and make them go to their rooms.  I know they often talk after I insist on lights out.

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That's a big difference! Does she shift her bedtime during the school year? 

 

Not really.  She has chronic insomnia (she was diagnosed when she was still a toddler; even high doses of melatonin doesn't help).  When she goes to bed and when she goes to sleep are two very different things.  She gets in bed by 11 year round.  If she's lucky, she's asleep by midnight.  Most nights it's more like 2 or 3.

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Not really. She has chronic insomnia (she was diagnosed when she was still a toddler; even high doses of melatonin doesn't help). When she goes to bed and when she goes to sleep are two very different things. She gets in bed by 11 year round. If she's lucky, she's asleep by midnight. Most nights it's more like 2 or 3.

I'm sorry to hear about the insomnia. :( Is she exhausted?

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Both of my teens go to bed at 10:30pm during the school week and wake at 6:15am. Trying to get them to sleep earlier would be pointless and letting them sleep in isn't an option since they now attend public school. On the weekends they can stay up until whenever. Youngest will be up by 9am and oldest is up by noon on weekends/non school days.

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Ours depends on the semester. Spring semester was bedtime at 10.30-11pm-ish and up just around 9am (natural). This semester it's up at 7.30am (I have to wake him up) and to bed by 10pm (but he needs to read or work on a puzzle before falling asleep so I think he only sleeps around 11pm). He has afternoon and evening classes and needs more shut-down time before actually sleeping. We'll have to adjust as the semester progresses so that he sleeps as close to his preferred 10-11 hours as possible.

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Both teens if left to their own devices drift to a wake up of around 11. Last spring we needed to move ourselves back to a wake up time of 6 am for a couple of months. It was especially brutal because they had been doing 11am est and two weeks later 6am gmt. They have purposely kept things to 8:30 to 9:30 most days in self defence now that life has returned to normal. ;) They can get up early relatively easy if needed now.

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