Annual and Weekly Changes in the Sleep-Wake Rhythm of School Children

The journey through the world of adolescent sleep

“…Studies examining sleep in adolescents during school vacations, with less restricted daily schedules, also confirmed that students sleep less during the school year (Szymczak et al, 1993;Hansen et al, 2005). Late sleepwake patterns have been reported during summer vacation compared to the school period, and the intensity of the summer delay depended on the age (Crowley et al, 2006).…”

“…Analyzing sleep patterns separately on school and weekend days more comprehensively describes developmental changes in sleep/wake behavior. Adolescents sleep longer on weekends, and weekend sleep schedules are different from their weekday schedules, possibly because of insufficient sleep on school days (Szymczak et al, 1993;Laberge et al, 2001). The average amount of weekend oversleep across ages 13-19 was found to be 1 h 50 min (Wolfson and Carskadon, 1998).…”

“…Children slept on a fixed 10-h interval from 22:00 to 08:00 h. Regardless of age or developmental stage, nocturnal sleep time stayed constant -about 9 h. These data indicated that the need for sleep does not decrease and may even increase across adolescent development (Carskadon, 1982). Several other studies have confirmed that despite the reduced amount of sleep on weekdays, the sleep need does not decrease, and adolescents tend to extend sleep on weekends and holidays (Strauch and Meier, 1988;Andrade et al, 1993;Szymczak et al, 1993). Some differences in sleep behavior among adolescents from different countries have been described, but the biological sleep need appears to be somewhat invariable regardless of the place where the children were living (O'Malley and O'Malley, 2008).…”

“…A delay in the timing of sleep during adolescence has been observed in many countries in Europe and Asia (Szymczak et al, 1993;Thorleifsdottir et al, 2002;Iglowstein et al, 2003;Tagaya et al, 2004;Yang et al, 2005;Russo et al, 2007;Chung and Cheung, 2008). Teens tend to have later bedtimes than younger adolescents even when wake-up times are controlled by school or work (Carskadon, 1982(Carskadon, , 1990Thorleifsdottir et al, 2002;Hagenauer et al, 2009).…”

Variations in the sleep–wake cycle from childhood to adulthood: chronobiological perspectives

“…81 This difference between weekday and weekend sleep duration does not appear to be present during vacation from school, and overall sleep duration is longer in these vacation periods. 82 As such, it is likely that during the school week, adolescents obtain inadequate amounts of sleep, driving them to "catch-up" on weekends and vacation periods. This is accompanied by increased daytime sleepiness across adolescence with increasing age, [83][84][85] and increasing pubertal development.…”