By Diette Courrégé (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Nathaniel Frasier puts his kindergartner to bed by 9 p.m. each night and wakes him up at 6:30 a.m. for school.
He thought his son was getting enough sleep and didn't realize until this week that recommendations call for up to an hour and a half more sleep than his son gets now.
"That's a big difference," he said. "I thought that was too much sleep."
Frasier signed a contract Tuesday promising he would move his son's bedtime up by an hour, and he's curious to see if it makes a difference. The bedtime contracts are a school-wide initiative at Memminger Elementary in Charleston to create awareness about the importance of sleep, and to encourage parents to set and enforce earlier bedtimes.
"I'll give it a try," Frasier said. "It's a good idea."
Children who don't get enough sleep are more likely to get in trouble in class or lose their focus on the day's lessons, and it's a problem for many Memminger Elementary students, principal Diane Ross said.
Some stay at work late with their parents and don't get home until 11 p.m., while others stay awake for hours watching TV in their beds, she said. When students get into middle school, some stay up late sending text messages on their cell phones, said Kathy Lewis, a school climate specialist working with Memminger Elementary.
The situation has implications for the school's test scores. Many students admitted to filling in random circles on high-stakes standardized tests because they were tired, Ross said. Students need more than one night of good sleep to be well-rested, she said, and that's why school officials have started pushing to change students' habits.
Research shows that many children don't get enough sleep. Children ages 3 to 5 get nearly 10 1/2 hours while they should average between 11 and 13 hours, and first- through fifth-graders get an average of 9 1/2 compared to the recommended 10 to 11 hours, according to the National Sleep Foundation.
"So many people don't realize fourth- and fifth-graders should be in bed by 8 p.m.," Lewis said.
Eighteen elementary schools on Johns Island, downtown Charleston, West Ashley and Hollywood are participating in this sleep initiative. Some are sending fliers home to parents, some are making presentations to PTA groups and others are asking students to track the amount of sleep they get each night.
Memminger Elementary has embraced the effort to spread the message that students need more sleep. Ross stood in a robe outside Memminger Elementary on Tuesday and asked parents whether they signed the bedtime contracts. Students wore their pajamas to school, and teachers organized classroom activities around the issue of sleep to emphasize its importance.
School officials plan to track the number of discipline referrals for the school's younger students to see whether the figures decrease when students get more sleep.
The school also held a meeting for parents Tuesday morning to talk more about the relationship of sleep to their childrens' well-being.
Jessica Rabon attended the parents' meeting. She has 5-year-old and 7-year-old daughters at Memminger, and she said they get grouchy and don't want to do their homework when they don't get enough sleep.
She's a stickler for bedtimes and makes sure her children are in bed by 7:30 p.m. and are going to sleep by 8 p.m. Every family should set bedtimes for children, she said.
"They need their sleep," she said.
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