With the beginning of the new academic year, teachers report that most students come to school tired due to poor sleeping habits and instead of learning they end up snoozing in the classroom. Al-Riyadh daily reports on the difficulties children face in resetting their biological clocks due to a summer spent browsing social media websites and TV channels into the early hours of the morning. Khalid Al-Sebeali, who is in charge of extracurricular activities at a private school, said the best way to get a child's biological clock back on the right track is to do it gradually. Going to school without enough sleep and trying to play catchup after school will not solve the problem, he noted. “The best thing a family can do to fix the problem is to wake up their children early a few days before the school year commences and never let them go back to sleep until the evening. The family can take their children out and make them get busy doing something else so that they do not feel sleepy,” he suggested. Sociologist Khalid Al-Harbi said making a child go to sleep early is something that can be easily achieved if parents plan ahead of time. “Parents should design a schedule for their child and explain to him the bad effects of staying up late and going to school poorly rested. The most important thing is to implement the plan gradually so that the child looks at it as something doable,” he said. According to Al-Harbi, many parents do not set out a schedule for their children and instead let them go to school with only a few hours of sleep. “Of course, students lacking sleep will not be ready, let alone willing, to learn anything on the first few days of school owing to the fact that they are fatigued,” he added. Abdullah Al-Madkhli, a supervisor at Al-Kharj Education Administration, agreed that it is difficult for anyone, child or adult, to reset his biological clock. He, however, warned that poorly-rested children are likely to struggle academically. “If the student's biological clock gets disrupted, it will reflect on his academic performance negatively. He will feel distracted, tired, anxious and bored, in addition to experiencing a headache due to lack of sleep,” he said while adding it is important for parents to pick up on these symptoms and address them quickly before the academic year progresses. Dr. Ahmad Bahamam, a chest and pulmonology consultant at King Saud University who also specializes in sleep disorders, said, “I cannot stress enough the importance of not disrupting the biological clock. Sleep disorders can be mitigated by not sleeping in the day and avoiding fatty meals, especially in the days preceding the start of the school year.” Exposing oneself to sunlight in the bedroom after getting up can help a person set his biological clock back to the right track, Bahamam said. “It is important not to let a child engage in physical activities two hours before sleep time,” he added.
