Year 7 Pastoral Guardian

We are heading into our final term of the year – a short but very busy one as the students farewell their first year at high school. In all this busyness the sleep schedules of your child can become very disrupted which, in turn, adds to their anxiety levels. When teenagers hit puberty, they undergo a natural phenomenon known as sleep phase delay, which means they find it easier to stay up later at night and sleep longer in the mornings. Unfortunately, our school system does not cater for this phenomenon and so you need to work in routines that will allow your child to get close to the much needed nine hours of sleep.

It has been shown that social media is often the cause of teenagers staying up late into the night. The light emitted from backlit screens suppresses melatonin, a naturally produced sleep hormone that the body produces at the end of the day, making it almost impossible to fall asleep straight after interacting with technology for any length of time. For this reason, it is important to ensure your child has put away their phone, or computer, at least 30 minutes before they want to be sleeping and find some other ways to relax – read a book, watch a favourite show, do some meditation. 

The other issue with social media that keeps teenagers up at night is the content that they read, and this has them worrying all night. It is also not uncommon for messages to be sent very late at night, disturbing the sleep of your child, and therefore it is recommended to remove all devices from the bedroom to enable them to have an uninterrupted sleep. A recent research study found that ‘having night-time access to a phone undermined the ability to sleep, which, in turn, led to a decline in both self-esteem and the ability to cope with everyday challenges.’ (Damour, 2019) Sufficient uninterrupted sleep is an absolute necessity of life and when we deprive ourselves of this sleep it can lead to emotional fragility and have severe impacts on our coping strategies.   

Assessment comes upon us very quickly in Term 4 and your child will have already received a number of assignments to work on. Unlike last term, when the students had numerous exams, this term consists of several assignments. It is important to plan out the timing of these to ensure they do not leave it all until the last minute and be overwhelmed by the work. The students should be using their Student Planner to record all the due dates of assignments and tests so they can see where they fall. We encourage them to make a weekly planner as well where they can ensure they are utilising their time to the best advantage and reducing the pressure of work by spreading out the workload.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any concerns or issues over these last few weeks of term.

Colleen Goodin 

Year 7 Pastoral Guardian

goodc@staff.mta.qld.edu.au