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 I hope that you and your student(s) are able to spend lots of quality time together and catch up on some much needed sleep!
Holidays can be a hard time of year.... We encourage everyone to print this card and carry it. 1-800-273-TALK (8255) Wishing you a safe and healthy holiday season! -Katie Bryant  According to this CNN report, parents of teens and tweens are spending 9 hours a day on social media devices themselves! That amounts to the exact same amount of hours that our teens and tweens are spending on their own devices! What's more "More than 80% of that time was for pleasure, not work, with parents watching television, playing video games, social networking, browsing websites, or doing other things on a computer, smartphone or tablet."
Dr. Mike Brooks presented at the Speaker Series last week and spoke about Being Connected: Raising Balanced Kids in a Technological World (that's a link to the video presentation!) One of the biggest points he reiterated was that we cannot expect anything of our children that we are not willing to model first ourselves. So even though the old "because I said so" or "because I'm the adult" is an easy go to response - when it comes to social media use and rules, our children will learn them better if we are modeling them ourselves! Another conondrum Dr. Brooks pointed out was that we need to be ready to discuss with our children what they could be doing instead of being on their phones. With 9+ hours of personal device use under their belts, they do honestly forget (or perhaps don't even know) what their real hobbies away from a cell phone or iPad may be. Therefore, when you take away their devices (for their own good) it truly can feel like the end of the world if they don't know what other hobbies or interests they have. This is an excellent topic for conversation or an opportunity for bonding amongst parent and child when y'all go together to explore what your kiddos next hobby could be! Now we know how we are using our own 9 plus hours on personal devices but we often don't know how our children are using them. This article highlights excellents ways to begin a digitial dialogue with your teen about their use. Unfortuantely, not everything online IS safe and just like our kids grow up knowing "Just say no to drugs!" (or maybe that was our generation but the rules still apply) our teens need to understand that not all social media is safe either! Furthermore, if we can teach our children about productive media time - perhaps we don't only keep them safe but also can reduce their online time as well. Don't forget to take another peak at the excellent blog Katie wrote about "Media Rules" with excellent guidelines on how to tackle this growing issue! Most importantly, don't be too hard on yourselves as parents. Yes, we are also online just as much but as they say, the first step in recovery is knowing you have a problem. We can all reduce our screen times, encourage our children to do the same, and know how to fill that free time with quality bonding, conversation, and opportunities for new memories - especially as the holidays approach! Be kind to yourselves and here's to less time on our devices! -Kristi I recently presented to the PTO with a Challenge Success update along with sharing some of our data from our Challenge Success survey the students took last year. When I shared the statistics on sleep, parents asked for more information to be sent to them about it. Below are just a few good ones that I have read recently. But the research has remained the same – We need MORE sleep and we are getting less and less of it!
Our students report only getting only an average of 6 hrs per night while 9.25 hrs is the recommended amount. Among teens, sleep deprivation an epidemic! 5 Scary Health Effects Of Sleep Deprivation During The Teen Years! It was "...found that each hour of lost sleep is associated with a 38 percent increased risk of feeling sad or hopeless and a 58 percent increase in suicide attempts. Teens who sleep an average of six hours per night are also three times more likely to suffer from depression, a 2010 study found." This lists many symptoms that we see in our students! What Happens to Your Brain When You Don't Sleep In the never-ending search for an edge, NFL teams have opened their eyes to sleep as a priority, backed up by science that increasingly points to its importance for physical and mental health. While this one talks about athletic performance, I like to think of all the things our students are trying to cram into their day as “performance.” We need to constantly remind our students that, “Sleep is a weapon.” This is a few years old, but another one on sleep and improved athletic performance. And don’t forget to take up ALL the electronics at bedtime. Now go get some ZZZs this weekend! Katie Bryant, needing to work on sleep myself! |
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