We’ve been having a ‘gender differences’ debate on my blog and I think I’ll irritate everyone here by stating: “Adolescent boys require more sleep as a biolgical necessity.”

Ok, let me have it!

LOL! Pot stirrer!

Of course, all teenagers need more than 4 hours of sleep at night.

This is an entirely unscientific recollection...I do recall that 6 hours of sleep always held me in pretty good stead. Less was okay, too. I would routinely read until 2 in the morning. With a flashlight.

My brother, on the other hand, was a mess with less than 7 or 8 hours. And boy could he sleep Saturdays away. My lad is pretty much the same.

But I don’t know.

It doesn’t strike me as necessarily being a gender issue to argue over, though. Boys and girls are different. We probably discovered that somewhere around the 2nd or 3rd grade.

Are there any scientific studies to back up your supposition?

As a former adolescent male, I’ll just say that I never turned down an opportunity to sleep on weekends.  (I never got much chance, but...)

The worst was Sunday morning paper deliveries.  Up at 5:00am, back home at 6:15am, sleep till 8:00am, then off to Mass, where I nearly invariably slept through the sermon (Bless me father, for I have sinned...)

That was funny Linkmeister.
Raye I wouldn’t let him work during the week. There are plenty of jobs out there for teenagers during weekends. When Amanda got her job I told her that she could only work one night, or none if it started getting in the way of school, homework, or even her missing too many school social events. They have all summer to work and play and after next year their whole lives! Can you believe they only have a little less than two years? How the heck did that happen?

Crash and burn at 17?  I did it and there was a repeat performance in the next generation towards the end of Grade 11.  What is it about being 17?! 

It’s a tough thing to witness from a parent’s perspective, but if your 17-year-old is anything like mine, it’s something that they have to go through and learn from themselves.  All of the advice and laying down of the law didn’t make a bit of difference - she had to learn for herself.  Learn she did and I’m sure that Ian will, too. 

Full marks to him for the ambition and work ethic that got him into this predicament, though.  He has to learn a lesson in balancing commitments and responsibilities, but better having to scale back from too much than not putting any effort into anything at all.

Well, you want to know what convinced him?

It wasn’t the two days of being tardy, per se. It wasn’t dragging his exhausted body to and fro. No. It was walking into his history class where the exam was in progress. He sat down and started the exam and couldn’t finish because class ran out. Too bad, the teacher said. Get a new alarm clock and be on time next time.

So, he told me, he’d have done just as well if he hadn’t studied because he was too exhausted to drag his butt in on time. “I’m not getting out what I’m putting in,” he said. “I’m overextended.”

He’s cutting his work hours back to weekends until after x-country when he can work a couple of afternoons a week and a long shift on the weekends. As long as he’s free of commitments by 6:00 pm on school nights, I’m fine with it.