The school bus picks up my kids at 6.00 a.m. Their classes start at 6.45 a.m. They get home around 4.30 p.m. Between relaxing, completing their school projects and homework, bath and a little family time in the evening, they go to bed at around 9.00 p.m. Ocassionally, if homeworks and projects are more numerous and time-consuming, they go to bed at a later hour. There were times when they did not finish until around 11.00 p.m. On very rare nights when homework is light, they sleep before 9.00 p.m.To make sure that they are dressed and ready by the time the school bus arrives, they have to get up around 5.00 a.m. On schooldays, therefore, they get an average of eight hours sleep. Most doctors will say that at their age–10 and 11–they should be getting at least 10 hours of sleep.
Now I have a friend with kids around the same age as mine. She sends them to bed at 8.00 p.m. Thing is, most days they are not able to finish their homework by 8.00 p.m. Their mom, my friend, does the unfinished homework for them. She and her father-in-law do the kids’ projects, she answers the workbooks, writes the essays, solve the math problems and exercises.
Should I follow my friend’s example so that my kids can get more sleep? Or should she follow mine and let her kids do their own assignments even if it means not always being able to sleep the prescribed number of hours? Or does the solution lie elsewhere?
This sleep v. homework situation is one of the reasons why I never considered sending my own kids to schools that entailed too much commuting time. My brother, whose kids–younger than mine–go to school an hour and a half drive away from their house, are roused from sleep before 5.00 a.m. They are dressed and fed in the car. Then they go through the afternoon traffic to get home. I don’t know how they do it. I don’t know how it will affect the kids’ emotional and physical health later in life.
Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, the distance between home and school is a significant factor especially when the kids are still young.
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