Sleep Deprivation and High Achieving Student

[Anonymous]

"9. Test yourself frequently.

Decades of research has shown that self-testing is crucial if you want to improve your academic performance.[13]

In one experiment, University of Louisville psychologist Keith Lyle taught the same statistics course to two groups of undergraduates.

For the first group, Lyle asked the students to complete a four- to six-question quiz at the end of each lecture. The quiz was based on material he’d just covered.

For the second group, Lyle didn’t give the students any quizzes.

At the end of the course, Lyle discovered that the first group significantly outperformed the second on all four midterm exams.

So don’t just passively read your textbook or your class notes. Study smart by quizzing yourself on the key concepts and equations. And as you prepare for a test, do as many practice questions as you can from different sources."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let me guess - RMIB? Oh wait. RMIB students get less than 6-7 hours a night on a school day. Must be some other program!

Here's what you do for her-
- cut down on non-essential socialization and make sure that sleep becomes a priority.
- get her in the habit of not check her social media account when doing homework. Even a quick peek takes 15 minutes especially when all the peers are messaging each other while doing homework
- Nap after school for 30 minutes.
- Pare down ECs and social obligations.
- Make sure she is getting top notch nutrition as well as some exercise every day.

Mom and dad should not remain awake with their HS DC at night - even as a show of support to them. You cannot have all family members be sleep deprived.

Anonymous wrote:OP here- bingo you guessed. It's a magnet though I won't say which one.

I was able to guess because I cud have written your post. My kid was in RMIB. 1st year was brutal for the entire family. I used to feel guilty when my kid was awake so I used to remain awake too. What if DS needed help? What if they needed a hot beverage? As a first time magnet parent, who was not fully aware of what magnet entailed, I was floundering and feeling very guilty about the amount of work that my kid was doing.

No one can convey to you how much work and sacrifice is involved when your kid goes to a magnet program because what you hear is "Magnet is very hard. Its a lot of work. It is not easy. blah, blah, blah" - and you think that you understand what that means. However, it is not one day of sleeping late. It is a relentless and chronic daily pattern of late nights, multiple projects, assignments etc in a very stressful environment. Of course, no one else is admitting that sleep deprivation is a problem with their kid either, so you feel that you are all alone and doing something wrong. Getting good grades and doing well is not the issue, these kids are already very bright and motivated. The issue becomes the lack of sleep, because these are teens and they are also at time distracted and procrastinating. However, since the program pace is so fast, they cannot afford to procrastinate.

So this is what we did - we become sleep Nazis and pretty much shielded our kid from any social obligation where his presence was not mandatory. The only events he attended was those he wanted to attend - mainly school based. We cut down his EC activities that required a huge time committment (Theater for example). He was not required to do any chores for all the HS years. One thing we did with our DC was to do drop off and pick up from school or any other place he needed to be. We had blankets and pillows in the car and he could sleep for additional minutes to and from the school. + he saved on the additional time required to get to the bus-stop and wait there. Finally, breakfast was served in the car. I made sure he had a hot meal in the car so he could eat his breakfast and then nap or chill in the car. Oh, and I started to sleep on time myself and stopped worrying about him. I figured he was a teen while I was a middle aged person. I would not recover from lack of sleep while he could.

Finally, it is a marathon for 4 years in RMIB (in other magnets, seniors have it easier once they have their college acceptance). - so make use of holidays, snow-days and breaks, since that's an excellent time to catch up on sleep AND work ahead AND do something fun with friends.

I am sure some posters will write "Oh that's why we did not want our kids to go to magnet. We wanted them to have a normal HS experience." Disregard them. Magnets are the best education for your kid and many of the issues that other HS parents face with their kids having a lot of leisure time on their hands will never be a problem for you or your daughter. They go to college very well prepared to succeed and they get a solid education. Besides I have yet to meet anyone who got into magnet program and then decided not to do it.

Your child has finished one year. She only has two and a half more years to go. So this will end one day. She will become more organized and she will learn to prioritize. Your job as parents is to take care of your own health, lend logistical support (and a lot of emotional support), provide good nutrition to the entire family and make sure that your kid rests. Ask her to reduce her social media usage and reduce the time she is online on her devices. The magnet kids cannot afford to be on the devices all the time. Make sure she is getting enough exercise (use the treadmill if she is not in sports) and she is eating her vitamins etc. Also, she will learn to work smart and fast very soon.

For her emotional well being, help her to participate and enjoy the big HS social moments - homecoming, prom, Mr. RM etc and figure out how they can enjoy all of that without too much investment of time and energy preparing for that. A friend whose DD was in the RMIB program used to buy several dresses and shoes for her daughter before any formal event because the kid did not have the time to go shopping. The daughter would try on the dresses at home, pick one that she liked from the dozens (that's right - dozens) that her mother bought and the next day her mom was back at the stores returning the dresses that the daughter did not want. I was so glad I had a boy who did not need all of that for formal events.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Study in chunked sessions: Your ability to retain information diminishes after about 25-30 minutes, so break it up into multiple, smaller sessions."

Just don't do anything fun/social media based between the sessions if you hope to get back to work soon.

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much 15:22. You told me exactly what I needed to hear. Though my daughter is doing well, I feel like a major failure as parent due to our cumulative exhaustion. I have a younger child who told me many times last year that the rings around my eyes were so bad that I looked like I had been punched in the face.

I also get so much unsolicited advice from non-magnet folks like my ILs who reiterate how I'm a failure. I'm told that not making my DD do chores for example is setting her up for failure in life and make me feel guilty for all the things that I do for her. For example, I drive her to school every day just so she can get that extra 30 minutes of sleep.

I really like your approach of focusing on meals/nutrition, helping her with sleep and saying no to all unnecessary social obligations. I'm not sure I'll be able to not stay up with her all the time but I will try.

Thank You!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Compare to some kids in MCPS, that’s a lot.

I agree, sleeping 11pm to 6am should work with most kids who have a sport or serious club plus one weeknight game/meet a week. That's the typical 2-4 hours of homework from 7-11pm. This is the same for all high schools around here, and where and when I grew up too.
It'd be great if she could get a schedule with less homework or get to bed at 10pm a few nights a week.

[Anonymous]

New poster (magnet mom) here.

I also recognized your post. It was a constant struggle at our house. I wanted my child to take care of herself (and have a life outside school). My kid just wanted to take the most challenging classes. Finally, during senior year, facing major burnout, we convinced them to take a study hall. It made a big difference because not only did they have time to do some homework, but there was one less class to assign work.

On the plus side, now at college, my child feels a lot less stress. The classes are about the same level, but there are fewer of them and less time spent in classes.

Don't feel guilty about whatever coping strategies your family needs to adopt. My child was basically choreless as well. If you really want to, you can give them chores over the summer. Basically, I just wanted mine to have a restful vacation. I didn't drive them to school on a regular basis, but I did on occasion when it would make their life easier. Most of the time, they did homework on the bus.

I think the pp's advice to go to bed yourself was excellent. I stayed up a few times for "support", accomplishing nothing.

Try to ignore the criticism. Magnet programs are so much more intense than the regular high school program that most people can't comprehend what these kids are facing. They're basically taking 8 college level classes, when a full schedule for a typical college student is 5. This translates to about 24 credit hours. I think the recommendation in college is to allow 2-3 hours of homework/study per credit hour. This would mean about 48-72 hours of homework for the kids. Add the time kids are in school, about another 35 hours. Add about another 10 hours for getting to and from the magnet. If there are 168 hours in a week, you've already accounted for 93-117 of them. This leaves 51-75 hours (7.3-10.7 hrs/day) for sleeping, eating, hygiene, family obligations, extracurricular activities, socializing, etc. Something, somewhere, has to give.

I think you're doing a great job. You can try and encourage balance, but if you have a magnet kid, they're probably driven to seek out challenge. As my kid progressed through the program, they learned that maybe taking the hardest course in EVERY subject wasn't actually what they wanted to do and were more open to ways to lighten the load.

[Anonymous]

She should get used to it if she wants to end up at a top college because it'll be even worse later. For 4 years at MIT, I usually got less than 4 hours of sleep a night. It was the norm there; it has nothing to do with bad study habits, it's just expected with the workload. I'd completely crash on school holidays and then go back to it again, sleeping normally only in the summer while working an intership. I'm too old for that ish now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Compare to some kids in MCPS, that’s a lot.

My junior year in high school I had a ridiculous amount of school work plus played three sports, Did several other extracurriculars, & had undiagnosed inattentive ADHD. All this meant I slept maybe 3 or 4 hours a night on average.



This still doesn’t make it ok for OP’s kid to regularly get less than the recommended amount of sleep for her age — somebody somewhere always has/had it worse.

[Anonymous]

OP here- I don’t know how regular HS’ compare but I know a friend’s child was recommended to repeat both language and math freshman year for the magnet program because it is so much more rigorous than the public middle he came from.

[Anonymous]

You are all pathetic Tiger moms. Magnet and IB are for kids who genuinely need harder courses so they are not bored. It is not meant to keep somewhat smart kids up half the night stressing away to keep up with genuinely gifted kids. The fact you are all okay with sleep deprivation for a 14yr old as a means to produce some great college resume is so sad and creepy. No wonder anxiety, depression, ADD, and suicide are they the roof.

I am surprised your DD isn’t popping Adderall like most magnet kids do. There is always one nerdy kid selling them for $3 a pill at all the schools. She will catch on soon enough.

[Anonymous]

I bet op’s kid is at phs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You are all pathetic Tiger moms. Magnet and IB are for kids who genuinely need harder courses so they are not bored. It is not meant to keep somewhat smart kids up half the night stressing away to keep up with genuinely gifted kids. The fact you are all okay with sleep deprivation for a 14yr old as a means to produce some great college resume is so sad and creepy. No wonder anxiety, depression, ADD, and suicide are they the roof.

I am surprised your DD isn’t popping Adderall like most magnet kids do. There is always one nerdy kid selling them for $3 a pill at all the schools. She will catch on soon enough.

STFU and go away.

Your kid is not in magnet and you have no idea what the program is all about so your opinion does not count. Watch your own kid and worry about their mental health because they have a toxic person like you parenting them.

I hope your kid does not get anxiety, depression, ADD, addiction or commits suicide.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I bet op’s kid is at phs.

Does not matter. Regardless of how bright the kid is the volume of work is high and it requires committment from the student and the parents. There is a reason why the admissions criteria is so tough. These are highly competitive programs and very few students are selected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You are all pathetic Tiger moms. Magnet and IB are for kids who genuinely need harder courses so they are not bored. It is not meant to keep somewhat smart kids up half the night stressing away to keep up with genuinely gifted kids. The fact you are all okay with sleep deprivation for a 14yr old as a means to produce some great college resume is so sad and creepy. No wonder anxiety, depression, ADD, and suicide are they the roof.

I am surprised your DD isn’t popping Adderall like most magnet kids do. There is always one nerdy kid selling them for $3 a pill at all the schools. She will catch on soon enough.

Magnet kids are not committing suicide, magnet kids are not indulging in risky sexual behavior, magnet kids are not hooked on opioids, magnet kids are not selling drugs, magnet kids are not bringing guns to school. Why? Too busy studying or doing EC activities or sports or catching up on their sleep

So, statistically your low achieving child is more likely to suffer from feelings of low self-esteem and be self destructive. Why don't you look after your child and let the magnet parents worry about their magnet kids, hmmm?

[Anonymous]

Always good to break them in in high school so they once they get to their 70-hour a week burn-out job they don't know the difference. treadmill after treadmill.