Back to School again. Ugh, someone drag me out of bed please.

School started up on September 1st here.  I guess it had to come.  All things must pass said George Harrison.

I always hear about "what are we going to do with the kids in the summer this year?" as if it is a monumental crisis.  I have no problems with it.  I take my vacation and bring the girls with me.  Then when I am back, my wife sort of goes on vacation and I work. On vacation we go to bed a bit later because the sun goes to bed later.  We get up later because we are allowed to and do pretty much what we please according to our circadian rhythm.

For a while my girls were sleeping for 12 hours a night in the summer.  Fine by me.  If that is what they needed.  Great.


Along comes the spider and sat down beside her, I mean along comes the school year AGAIN and messes up everyone`s schedule and circadian rhythm.
 In the summer I was going to bed between Midnight and 1 am and getting up between 8 and 9 am.  I think that was very reasonable.


 Now, I still go to bed between 11.30 and 12.30 but I have to get up at 6.30 am!! Arg.  Not to mention that I usually have dreams about impending failure in Biology or Math class because I haven't gone to class all semester and I have the final exam tomorrow and I have read absolutely none of the reading.... grrrr.  And then my younger daughter calls me at 3am (she knows it is senseless to call her Mother because Mother will not hear her because she sleeps like she is in a coma) and I have to lull her back to sleep, but I don't fall back to sleep for another hour.  I am confronted with terrible sleep deprivation which makes me tired much of the day.  And ... what was the title of this post?  What was I talking about...?

Oh yeah, back to school.

I was originally looking for an article I heard about which talked about the busiest time of day for parents and children being in the morning before school and evening before bed, but instead I came across this article.  Now I know it isn't a reputable newspaper, or it has those sideline articles about Lindsey Lohann back in jail or the Kardashians new butt slimming diet (which obviously hasn't worked for them), all the same I had to take notice.

OK, you all read the article.   

But wait a sec, I am not a teenager?  And my girls are not teenagers yet either.   They say these problems commonly occur among teenagers.  The other article about circadian rhythm also mentions DSPS affecting teenagers and young adults, but usually going away by mid twenties or adult hood. (Ha, you think mid twenties is "adulthood"? Phh, where do you come from?) So why should I be interested?  I am in fact about middle age, at least it says so on my drivers license.  Well because for the likes of me, I can not go to bed before 11pm.  The last time I did that was when I got food poisoning in August 2014 and I was wasted from throwing up all day that I went straight to bed when I got home from work at 8pm.

Likewise, getting up at 6.30 is akin to, well, having food poisoning and having no strength in your body because you have literally thrown it all up.  You might as well drag me out of the bed across the floor to get me up.  It shouldn't be too hard.  We only sleep on a mattress on the floor so I wont clonk my head falling out of bed.  Suffice to say, I do get up, but it is like getting up after surgery.  In fact, making Dad wake up so early in the morning is plain cruelty (yes say it, cruelty to animals). 

Here is the last article, a bit more in depth and complicated, but quite interesting, about circadian sleep disorders.  It is called Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome DSPS.

All this leads me to hypothesize that in fact I have the brain of a teenager. In deed I hope I have reached puberty.  But that could be debated.   

I probably have a light case of DSPS.  Thus I would like to make an individual plea to my daughter`s school: Look school system, all I am asking for is we get started at 9am instead of 8am and I can sleep till 7.30am.  That would suit me fine.  I wouldn't go to bed later, I would still get to bed at 11.30 pm or so.  Maybe I would even donate a fine goat to the school in appreciation... oh sorry wrong millennium and country.

And in fact my wishes were partly granted last year and continuing this year, for on Tuesdays and Thursdays my daughter can be in school at 9am because her first class is split in two.   Half the group takes the class at 8am and the other half in the afternoon (the other kids can go home sooner those days).

This has been wonderful.  You don't know how much I look forward to Monday nights and Wednesday nights.  If we get up early enough on Tuesdays and Thursdays my wife makes pancakes and we have a big breakfast and we have a nice morning.  Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are usually just grab a cup of tea and just make it out the door in time to not take the car and a brisk walk to school to be on time.  (I hate it when we are so late that we have to give in to taking the car to get us there on time.) 

Let it be known I feel embarrassed at my silly First World complaint and request when so many others are losing their homes and have to walk across Europe to find a place of safety.  I do think about these things, but all the same, I would like to air my request for a later school day start.  Granted it is very selfish as only 1 in 1000 people are afflicted with DSPS and even less have it past their twenties.  And I realize others have to be at work at 9am and they bring their kids to school before work, all the same, I thought it was important for it to be known that often other people do not fit into the exact same mould as the rest of society and even not through their doing, but through their  DNA. We should at least acknowledge that not everyone is the same even if they want to fit in with society "properly".  In other words, give those non morning people a bit of leeway and a little break.  Dont scoff at them and say nastily, "So and so is so lazy, he is always late to work."  Instead say, "So and so must have DSPS, he is always late to work.  Poor guy.  We should fire him."  Uh, except for that last bit. 

I will definitely be watching my daughters when they become teenagers to see if they show signs of DSPS.  If you have teenagers, maybe you should too.  Then again, they might just be on drugs, in which case you dont have anything to worry about with DSPS. Uh.... 

But for the time being, I ll take it and get up at 6.30 am and try to go to bed earlier and "fit in", because I love my daughters and love means that you often do things that you don't want to do.

Oh well, ten more months till Summer vacation.

I ll get some pictures in this post to brighten it up.  I just wanted to publish it on the weekend while weekend was still here.   Thanks for reading.  Make a comment, even call me names if you want.