JEDDAH — Parents in the Kingdom have long complained that their children's days start at an unreasonably early hour. As enrollment in both public and private schools increases and traffic on the Kingdom's roads worsens, children find themselves waking up at the crack of dawn to make it to school on time. As a result, parents are now calling on the Ministry of Education to consider mandating schools to start an hour or even half an hour later so that children can be physically and mentally prepared to receive and understand the lessons taught in schools and to interact more positively with friends and teachers. “My daughter's bus arrives at 6:15 a.m. and if she is not downstairs, the bus driver blares the horn and wakes up the entire neighborhood. It is still pitch black outside when she goes down and sits on the apartment building's front steps to wait for the bus. I am concerned for her so I watch her from the window to make sure she safely gets on the school bus,” said Salam Mohsen. “Young children respond to their parents' frantic attempts to wake them up by moaning, ‘Why do we have to get up now? It's still dark outside?'” she added. Mai Nehlawi, mother of three children and head of the science department at Al-Ibdaa Girls School in Jeddah, described mornings in her house as a crisis period and time of great stress. She said staying up late was part of Saudi culture, something the Ministry of Education should recognize and adjust school timings accordingly. “Mornings should be a peaceful time to pray, supplicate, briefly reflect and plan for the coming day and to have a healthy breakfast with the family. I am a teacher so my kids and I must get up at 5:30 a.m. and it is a frantic rush to be ready and in the car as soon as possible so we can arrive at our schools at exactly 7 a.m.,” she said. “Current school hours are unsuitable and they clash with the culture and lifestyle in Saudi Arabia. Being out in the city at midnight is like midday; there is the hustle and bustle of cars and people. Fathers who work two shifts in the private sector return to their homes no earlier than 10:30 p.m., so if the kids are already asleep, when does he get the chance to see his children? No matter how hard families try, most children in the Kingdom go to bed late, resulting in a lack of adequate sleep for young minds and bodies. It makes no sense to expect students and teachers to start at 7 a.m.,” added Nehlawi. As a mother and teacher, Nehlawi sees the detrimental effects of children not getting enough sleep. “As teachers, we constantly deal with the problem of girls arriving late to school and missing out on the important morning assembly and even several minutes of the first lesson. We notice that some girls are always lazy, sleepy, tired and uninterested and it directly interferes with their academic performance,” said Nehlawi. Psychologist and researcher in the field of sleep disorders, Mary A. Brasch, said the number of hours of sleep children require decreases as they grow older. She recommends that children under the age of 12 get a minimum of 10 hours of sleep per night. By high school, teens typically require about nine hours of sleep. “Sufficient sleep is necessary to allow the child's body to rest after high levels of daily physical activity and to promote healthy growth of bones, muscles and other body tissues. And because the immune system is rejuvenated during sleep, insufficient sleep can cause the body to begin to break down, making children more susceptible to infection and illness. Further, the human brain during sleep performs functions that are necessary for providing mental alertness the next day. “If these functions are interrupted, problems with memory, concentration and mood may result,” said Brasch. Most parents in the Kingdom are unaware that when sleep deficiency continues over a prolonged period of time, serious consequences can result. For example, it is possible for a child who is sleep-deprived to become depressed, moody, unmotivated at home and in school, and uncooperative. Sleep difficulties in children also compound other psychological problems and disorders,such as anxiety, attention disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder. Riam Darwish, a social researcher and mother of three, does not suffer as much as other families because her daughters' school, Jeddah Knowledge School, has a policy that requires the first lesson to start a little later — at 7:45 a.m. “I can imagine that mornings are very stressful for families whose children have to be in school by 7 a.m. Kids need their sleep and they cannot be rushed in the morning. When I wake my kids up, of course they beg for five more minutes, then three more until they finally pull themselves out of bed. The whole routine of brushing teeth, getting dressed, praying, eating breakfast and making sure bags are packed takes a lot of time. So having a bit of extra time is very helpful and takes away from the morning tension,” said Darwish. A little bit of extra shut-eye time could make a difference in reducing the struggle between parents and children in the morning and in promoting better health. However, not everyone agrees with this suggestion, due to the lack of adequate alternative means of transportation and the traffic problems in the Kingdom. One social analyst, Moustafa Noor, called on the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Transport to come up with real solutions to the problem. “There are no means of public transportation such as buses or a subway system that children can use. Each family has a car and sometimes even more than one on the roads. Students must get to school one hour before most employees yet traffic is still bad when we drive to work in the morning even though all kids are already safely tucked in their schools. If school teachers and students had the same timings as other employees, traffic congestion would multiply exponentially in the morning and that would create a host of new problems.”
