Owls and Larks
July 7, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Are you an owl or a lark?
I don’t mean do you sound like this or more like this, but what are your sleeping habits?
A Blog Around the Clock notes this distinction in a post entitled Sleep Schedules in Adolescents:
Everyone, from little children, through teens and young adults to elderly, belongs to one of the ‘chronotypes’. You can be a more or less extreme lark (phase-advanced, tend to wake up and fall asleep early), a more or less extreme owl (phase-delayed, tend to wake up and fall asleep late). You can be something in between – some kind of “median” (I don’t want to call this normal, because the whole spectrum is normal) chronotype.
Along a different continuum, one can be very rigid (usually the extreme larks find it really difficult to adjust to work schedules that do not fit their clocks), or quite flexible (people who find it easy to work night-shifts or rotating shifts and tend to remain in such jobs long after their colleagues with less flexible clocks have quit).
No matter where you are on these continua, once you hit puberty your clock will phase-delay. If you were an owl to begin with, you will become a more extreme owl for about a dozen years. If you are an extreme lark, you’ll be a less extreme lark. In the late 20s, your clock will gradually go back to your baseline chronotype and retain it for the rest of your life.
A Blog Around the Clock notes that chronotypes are not “social constructs,” but that school schedules (a first period at 7.30am, lunch at 10.30am) are:
No amount of bribing or threatening can make an adolescent fall asleep early. Don’t blame video games or TV. Even if you take all of these away (and you should that late at night, and replace them with books) and switch off the lights, the poor teen will toss and turn and not fall asleep until midnight or later, thus getting only about 4-6 hours of sleep until it is time to get up and go to school again.
Charlie is 10 years old, not quite an adolescent (but before I know it, he will be……..). He has had his share of sleep problems. Several months ago, he was going to bed at 9pm after a full day of school, therapy session, walk, activities, bedtime routine; in early January, we started to give him melatonin, with good results: While there is the occasional 3am wake-up (often due to Charlie’s being excited about and anticipating some event), thanks to the melatonin and to maintaining (most nights) a placid and calming bedtime routine (reading this book, Sleep Better! gave me some ideas), he has been going to sleep and waking at a regular time. I would say that Charlie is more of an owl—-he likes to stay awake as long as he can at night and to take his time waking in the morning—-but if he knows there is some early morning thing (getting on the schoolbus and going to school) that he wants to do, he is decidedly larkish in his waking time.
I guess it could be said that his chronotype is rather diverse.
Lark photo courtesy of Jeff’s Digiscoped Wildlife ; owl photo courtesy of Toshio; both via Flickr .
Well.. I am a Lark Kristina.. But my beautiful boy, he’s a night owl for sure.
Just like Charlie, he likes to stay awake as long as he can at night..
But getting him up in the morning can be a real challenge!
We’re Yin and Yang!
And judging by the times of some of your posts Kristina, I’d reckon you are a night owl like your son!
I am but I do like the early morning and sunrise—–just that middle of the day period…….
Aspie here… and naturally, my brain doesn’t fit the norm.
What about an extremely disorganized sleep/wake cycle? I’ve never been able to predict when I’m going to be tired–could be noon, could be midnight… As a baby, I never slept through the night; in fact, the point at which I stopped bugging Mom at night was something like 3-4 years, when I started just doing my own thing when I woke up instead of crying. But I’m a great lover of siestas and naps as well…
Melatonin works pretty well to keep me on a normal schedule; but without chemical assistance (and I’ve tried everything from OTC meds to prescription sleeping pills), I’m back to sleeping whenever, wherever. I sleep more when I’m stressed, less when I’m excited or in the middle of a project… It’s entirely unpredictable. What’s worse, I can’t sleep (even though I might be horribly tired) unless the room is perfectly dark and my fan is running and there’s no outisde noise the fan doesn’t drown out… I’ve taken to tying a towel around my eyes (because sleep masks are often made of polyester and I can’t stand the feel of it)… Of course, during the day, it’s bright; but if I’m tired, there’s just no way to actually get anything done, beyond very simple physical things, until I sleep!
I guess that’d be called a “sleep disorder”, huh?
We sooo have this issue at our house. My two girls and I are on the same sleep schedule. My husband and oldest son are the “night owls.” Then my fragile x son is down with the sun and up with the sun.
I’m someone who stays up as late as they can, but still wakes up before 7AM every day. I don’t necessarily get out of bed when I wake up, but I’m awake and stay awake…
Aidoann, what you describe is pretty much my pattern!
I’m an owl, but then as soon as it gets too bright I wake up whether I want to or not. If I have a dark place to live I’m practically a bat (4AM is bedtime….wake up at 1 PM or so…yeaaah thats the stuff….). Right now it’s 2AM bedtime/10AM risetime.
Me and my sibs are all owls. My parents are larks. My children – eldest daughter and son are larks, youngest daughter and son are owls.
Curiously, we always assumed that when my brother went from UK time to China, that he would be ‘cured.’
He wasn’t.
cheers
I have free-running or non-24 hour sleep.
This article mentions that a polymorphism of the per3 gene is associated with eveningness. I am homozygous for that polymorphism (that’s pretty common though).
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=544627
I am a lark, as is my son (Aspergers) — sort of. He is 15, and has the typical teen need for sleeping in when he can. My husband and daughter are both owls. I like the “lark” time. I get “me time” in the morning before the others awaken. And no one is around to steal my coffee, either.
I’m an owl.
My youngest is a lark.
Fortunately, he’s not the one who’s been getting into the worst trouble when unsupervised. (He’s been the mildest lately, even. The worst, and it happened today, involved a roller-ball pen. And eventually the ink washes & wears off skin, right?) I just need to be up before his siblings are.
On skin but not the wall—well, there’s always paint.
Actually, hairspray does wonders for removing ballpoint pen. Lola decorated a leather chair with one, and 70% came off with hairspray. The rest, well… let’s just say you can tell we have kids.
Tommy was more interested in drawing on skin this time, his own and his sister’s…. I think I’m just going to use soap on it.
(The initial scrubbing with soap didn’t take care of all of it, but his sister is mostly blue-free now, at least. I think it’s going to be a couple of days for him.)