The real reason parents want to kick their teenagers out June 3, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in older son.Tags: lark, night owl, sleep, work habits, working hours
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Or at least the reason this one does.
I have mentioned before that I am a morning person. The older son is most definitely not.
Things went fairly well when the older boy was working on his CLEP exam: he’d get up at 7 so that he could catch a ride to the library, where he usually studied until about 11 or 12. There were two or three days where he had ‘relapses’ and didn’t get up, but overall, he did very well. It led me to wonder if he was a morning person who was, unfortunately, jacking his schedule around so badly that he didn’t realize it.
Whether or not this is the case, I don’t know. However, since he took the CLEP exam, he’s fallen into some bad habits again, such as not getting out of bed until almost noon. This means he’s also up very, very late. And I’m a light sleeper. This is a very, very bad combination.
Since he’s done with high school and looking at college, it has occurred to me that maybe he should start looking to go to college a year early. Not only would he get done with college a bit earlier, I might be able to start getting some sleep, too.
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
I went to a talk the other year that showed evidence that teenagers circadian rhythms or something are messed up so they’re not morning people even if they have been morning people in the past and will be in the future. (The study showed that later school start times lead to higher testscores.)
I’ve read that, too. However, in older boy’s case, it’s more that he’s *always* had messed up sleeping schedules. He’s actually more normal now than when he was younger. But he has absolutely no desire to keep and maintain a schedule without some sort of external motivator. Apparently me threatening to kick him out of the house if he wakes me up one more time isn’t sufficiently motivating.
Obviously he needs to soundproof his room so he doesn’t bother anyone!