Tag: grief

The Destructive Force – Sleeplessness

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In preparing for your kids to go back to school, as well as getting the ’stuff’ organised, have a think about their sleeping patterns. Make sure they get enough sleep. Start now, getting them into a routine for going back to school and getting up early. Make appointments for them at 9.00!

My nana used to put all bad behaviour down to being hungry, tired or sick. I thought she was just being kind and that it was a bit simplistic. The older I get, the more I believe she was right. Parents are often surprised when I contact them about poor performance at school and ask about their childs sleeping and eating habits or health. I have seen some real improvements in both behaviour and academic performance from parents and students just focusing on getting adequate sleep and eating breakfast and lunch.

Many young people I speak to have said they only get 3 – 4 hours sleep a night. They are up all night playing games on computers, watching TV, stressing, on MSN or studying (sure!). They say they can’t get to sleep. They are too busy, have too much to do after school. They don’t want to ’sleep their lives away’. I explain to them about sleep deficit and that they really need sleep. The sleep deficit is something I have personally experienced when my children first went to school, I would drop them off and then go back to bed and sleep all day. I thought I was depressed but really, in hindsight I was just catching up on lost sleep when they were babies!

Lately in the news I have noticed lack of sleep being linked to obesity, attention deficit disorder, diabetes and accidents. The ABC Website has this amazing list of facts about sleep. There are plenty of amazing facts and I recommend you check out the list. The ones that really struck me were:

“Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.”

“In insomnia following bereavement, sleeping pills can disrupt grieving.”

“Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 need the least of all (about six hours). For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal.”

It is difficult to make kids understand the need for sleep. I tell the boys that sleep is necessary to grow tall. I have a book “7 Habits for Highly Effective Teens” by Shaun Covey and in that there is the statement that you need to get a lot of sleep in a totally dark room to grow taller. Boys want to be tall so that can work. I will be able to use some of the new articles about lack of sleep leading to obesity also now. Some girls have mentioned that when they go on extreme diets they can’t sleep, because they are hungry – scary!

As to the how to get to sleep for kids who say they have trouble, I ask lots of questions about what they do. Often caffiene is the culprit, they drink a lot of coke or coffee. Their routines (or lack of) can make sleep difficult.  In working with parents and students we will sometimes set boundaries around what time the TV or computer must go off, with the consequence of having it removed from use, if not adhered to. I have used essential oils with my own kids and meditation tapes. I have also not woken them up and let them deal with the consequences of being late and missing out on stuff due to not being able to wake up.

I think lack of sleep is a big problem in our society. You don’t have to look very far to find someone suffering from this. Sleeping pills seem a dangerous solution. We can’t take sleep for granted. It is a sign of something not right when you can’t sleep and it needs addressing.

I am really lucky, I have no problem currently with sleep. There have been times in my life after the loss of someone I’ve loved or periods of stress, when I have had some sleepless nights, but it has fortunately never developed into a long term or ongoing problem. I have experienced on those occasions how much lack of sleep impacts upon my effectiveness and my emotional levels. I now use a meditation soundtrack to listen to every night and it works well. There are plenty on the market. If you want to look at this in a more entertaining, yet still thoroughly informative way Craig Harper’s: Sleeping Ugly, is a great post on this topic.

Girlosophy: The Breakup Survival Kit by Anthea Paul

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‘The Breakup Survival Kit’ gives a well balanced action plan for girls who have split up, whatever the circumstances. It contains some good, common-sense advice for young women and lays a positive path for moving forward into a new future.

As with the other Girlosophy books by Anthea Paul, it has healthy suggestions and gentle messages about keeping your self-esteem in tact and building on it in a situation that can be demanding. It has beautiful images and although a smaller format than the other Girlosophy books remains true to the uplifting philosophy and beauty of the series.
I enjoyed this book and highly recommend it for both young women and men to help to gain perspective during one of those trying times in life. Breaking-up is a big life challenge and most people experience it at least once in their life, this little book contains many wisdom’s that can ease that passage.

‘Rose by any other name’ by Maureen McCarthy

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Maureen McCarthy read aloud the beginning of this novel to us at the Melbourne Writers Festival and I was hooked. I have devoured this book in a day. I could no longer resist it sitting in that pile next to my bed.

Remembering Young Adulthood
‘Rose by any other name’ is a novel I would recommend to all older teenagers about how life can get in the way of your plans and sidetrack you. I loved it as I remembered my first year out of school and how I went in every direction other than the clear and planned path. Sometimes the emotional upsets in our life drive us to seek escape from all the good and nurturing things in our life. They build a cranky outer shell that disguises who we really are from both the world and ourselves.

Unconditional Families
I loved this novel as a mother and a daughter. That tension between the mother and daughter that is so prevalent in my own mother/daughter and daughter/mother interactions. It was so realistic and funny and sad. Maureen McCarthy captures beautifully the pleasures and trails of belonging to a close family.

Rants
Sprinkled throughout the novel are rants about the things Rose hates, that she has published in a music magazine. My favourite:

“Don’tch just hate it… when you find out the all your dirty secrets are public knowledge? You go around thinking your life is private, that no one knows your business. Well, I’m here to tell you, you millions of multi-talented, meat-eating, hoodwinked, rock-loving Saucers, that not only do the banks, ASIO, the tax department and the credit companies have all your details on file, more than likely your family knows a lot more about your every move than you do. Yep,that’s right! Face it! Your mother reads your diary. Your siblings trawl through your emails. Your friends, hungry for contact with warm-blooded creatures after a day in front of the screen, spread your private confidences like preachers at a religious rally. Don’t blame them. Privacy is dead. Get used to it!……”

(pg 266)

And what a relief it is to have all our darkest guilty secrets and pains exposed and accepted. You try to save those close to you from the pain you experience, yet it is the pain of separation from them that is the real sin.

I really adored this novel. It contains so much emotionally; from the freedom and bliss of surfing, the joys of shared music taste, the intimacy of best girlfriends and sisters, the pain of betrayal, the vulnerability of being in love, the deep pain and anger of our most important people falling to human status, the discovery of loving the wrong person to the myriad of interactions that occur in relationships. It is a full and juicy novel.

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