> Terra Ziporyn Snider of Severna Park, Maryland, still remembers how difficult it was for her son to wake up for his 7:17 a.m. first-period class…
> That’s about to change in California, when a law—the first of its kind in the nation—goes into effect on July 1 requiring the state’s public high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m., and its middle schools no earlier than 8 a.m.
Wow. I may need to reassess my definition of “sleeping in”.
(Spoken as someone who had incredible difficulty getting to school by 8.50am back in the day and who hasn’t gotten up before 10.30am in the last week!)
Does that law account for "zero period"? From my quick reading of the bill, I think it does not -- so probably not that much will actually change. School may start at 8:30, but zero period will still start around 7:30, and some schools might create a double-zero to go earlier still.
It is absurd how early schools start. Objectively, there was no good reason why I had to be on my spot on the field at 7:08a every morning only to be done by 2:50p.
I recall reading in numerous places that the reason for that is so that the same bus fleet can be re-used to bring the elementary school children in at the far more reasonable time of 9 AM. I don't know if it's true, but if it is it's a uniquely American social phenomenon - inadequate public transport, a strange mixture of nanny state mentality and indifference to the welfare of children, and penny pinching all combining into a perfect storm of chronic sleep deprivation for an entire demographic of developing brains.
Another explanation I've read is to make room in the afternoon schedule for varsity sports practice. Honestly I'm not sure which is worse.
The law does actually - you can have zero period but it can’t count towards the instructional time required for students.
It’s actually deeply annoying for my daughter’s high school. It already started 1st period at 830, but since 0 period no longer “counts”, the day is getting extended by almost an hour for all students.
This is from an email from our district earlier in the year:
The exceptions to this are zero period classes. Since zero period classes are optional and not required, these classes may begin before 8:30 AM; they just cannot be used to meet the instructional minute's requirements of 64,800 annual schoolwide instructional minutes
When I was in high school some 20 years ago, I had to be up no later than 6 if I wanted to make my zero period choir class. And moving it after school was a no go due to related (theater or band) extra-curriculars. Regular school started at 7:20. We have exchange students, and it's slightly better for them at 7:45…
I've managed to train myself to fall asleep on the way back and wake up when the noise in the bus quiets down, in between the second to last and my stop.
I gasped at the 7:17am opening class time. That's absurd. I think mine was something like 8-8:30am, and even that was hell. It would even be absolute hell now as an adult.
I honestly think our schools are a generally a massive waste of time and money, as they are now. Meaning, they meed to i prove. They have basically become daycare centers. The education is really not good, and no one is learning anything. Then you graduate only to be greeted with the basically mandatory acceptance of debt and another four years of extended high school or a lifetime of labor jobs.
Idk, it is a matter of preference. I was hard for me to get up for school because I went to sleep late, because I didn't care enough about school. If the school started (and ended) later, then I'd to sleep even later. What mostly matters after all is the number of hours you slept.
When I got to the army I needed to constantly get up at around 0530. What I found out is that it's not a problem for me (and I firmly believed it would be nearly impossible) if I go to sleep early enough. It worked for most of people around me as well. Since then I don't think getting up earlier or later really matters, I decide it based on the stuff I want to do and not the other way around.
My HS (early 2000s in the Midwest) started at 7:0x through the years, I remember 7:04 and 7:07 start times. It was all about “minutes of education” as that’s what the funding for schools was based on. 5 minutes between classes to hit your locker, the restroom, chat with friends, and get to your next class. They were such jerks about it that they’d literally lock the doors to the classrooms the second the bell rang, then do hall sweeps with the security guards and anyone who didn’t get into a classroom got automatic detention. If that happened 3 times in a school year, you’d get a week suspension and your parents would have to come in and talk to one of the vice principals.
> They were such jerks about it that they’d literally lock the doors to the classrooms the second the bell rang, then do hall sweeps with the security guards and anyone who didn’t get into a classroom got automatic detention.
They wouldn't lock the door at my school, but teachers would generally give you detention when you arrived late. Teachers would also take it personally if you didn't have the textbook for their class with you despite there not being nearly enough time to get to your locker and back. Add to that the fact that teachers often would still be trying to finish things up when the bell rang and wouldn't let us leave, and we'd end up with the perfect storm of being forced to strain to carry all of the textbooks for most of the day just to avoid detention but then end up still being late due to not being let out on time and having to walk slowly because of the said textbooks. And then they'd occasionally lecture us for ruining our posture with our heavy bags like we had any control over the situation...
I went to a high school in the same district as this one, 7:17 am was absolutely brutal. I had it timed down to the minute so I could sleep as long as possible and not be late once I started driving myself.
When I was teaching, I'd get into school for about 7:15am (so wake up at about 5am), so I could make sure I was prepared for my lessons that day. My first class was never before 9am, and school ended at 3:30pm.
I just couldn't have coped classes starting that early.
Yeah, my high school started at 8:50 am too, and that still felt too early. This article mentioned that Seattle high schools used to start at 7:50 am, that seems absolutely nuts.
I’d peg roughly 9:30 am as a good time for high schools to start.
Ireland here. My school (which thought entirely through Irish, aside from English lessons, obviously, advertised itself as starting and finishing early, and it started at 08:30 as well.
It's weird looking back on high school and realizing how much of it was ridiculously cruel. You'd have teachers and parents all telling you that it's your fault for not having better time management skills or executive functioning skills, all the while you're 15; you're still growing mentally and physically; you're sleep deprived as hell; and the work is just piling on, and on and on. Their advice, I kid you not, was to just squeak in work in every possible situation. On the subway? Read your assigned book. In class? Sneak in some homework. And sure, kids procrastinate. But they procrastinate because they want to have leisure and they feel absolutely no control over their lives.
Good luck if you did a sport. I remember hearing some elite fencers talk and all of them said essentially "yeah...I didn't get a lot of sleep in high school". That's not some innocuous hard work ethic mindset. That's messing with a developing brain and depriving it of a necessary resource.
It pisses me off that we're just realizing that this culture of torturing teenagers is maybe not the best idea.
I recall simply being unable to wake up for first period at 8am most days, in late high school. Waking was painful and nothing felt better than sleep. However at night, despite efforts at good sleep hygiene and consultation from a counselor, i couldn’t get to sleep before 11 or later. My grades and mood suffered greatly, as did the relationship with my poor mother. She battled with me day after day, first thing in the morning, to go to school.
The first few years of college I did not schedule any classes before 10am and had effectively perfect attendance. Mood problems faded as soon as high school ended.
Even today, in my 30s, a day or two with poor sleep will make a noticeable mood dip regardless of circumstances.
But as an older adult, I naturally wake up at 6:00 every morning. It was the same for much of my childhood except a few years of high school. So perhaps this was a developmental thing.
Pretty much the same. It's like everything is exactly backwards. High school was brutal. I should have started school at 11 AM. Now, I absolutely get my best work done between 5 AM and noon.
University labs were always 8 AM, so wasn't much of a choice to try to do later, especially in the first two or three undergrad years. Even at that age, it was still a struggle. Why not night lab? Surely there's a doctoral student willing to attend to some freshmen doing reactions at 8 PM, right?
My high school started at 8:30 twenty years ago, and it was hell waking up to be there on time. Cut a period and let kids go in at 10am. 9:30am at the earliest. This, of course, will never happen. Even if it did happen, school at 10 implies that kids will wake up at 9 or earlier, which is still torturous.
School start is really bounded by the start of the average parent’s workday, unfortunately. Mom and Dad start work at 9 am. Kids need to be at school before then. None of this 10 am start talk makes sense for the kids that aren’t on the bus line and have parents that drive them to school.
This is the problem with American cities in general.
A very beaten dead-horse, but look at Japan:
Elementary Schools and Middle Schools placed within a MAXIMUM 10min walking pace distance at that age group’s walking pace.
High Schoolers able to commute to their school of choice due to robust public transportation network.
We have designed cities that create as byproducts incredible amount of self-inflicted wounds on our culture. We don’t have to live this way. This is a choice.
Parents go to work or send their kids off. A parent personally accompanying a student to school is an indicator of something having gone wrong.
It is also bounded in the other end by sports. If your school day goes too late, you won’t have time in the afternoon/evening for sports practices. So, if you still need X hours for classes, you’ll need to start early enough to get over in time for 1-1.5 hour practices.
(It also applies to other extracurricular sports, but I doubt anyone really worries about play practice schedules)
In the UK schools get around that problem by running 'Breakfast clubs' kids can turn up early and get a nourishing breakfast from a bit before 8am. The school day doesn't start until just before 9
Same. Hell on earth. I would never get up fresh no matter how early I went to bed. Most of my health problems started there and so many possibilities were lost! I'd rather have skipped early lessons, get bad marks, but had more energy to study later!
I don’t know. My schools first period was 7:50, but that meant we’d normally have to wake up around 5:45 in order to get ready for the bus, which came by our house around 6:45.
A two hour period from waking to being in first period seemed pretty normal, and even if you subtract that from a “more generous” 9am, you still get 7am, which is pretty brutal on adolescents which are known to have shifted sleep schedules.
9 hours of sleep every night?? I'd be happy with 6 or 7. But I'll need a full-time housekeeping staff and a personal assistant, to cook, wash dishes, clean the house, wash clothes, take care of house stuff, pay bills, go grocery shopping, and everything required for even a basic lifestyle, etc.
This is pretty cool and it's probably healthy. I was homeschooled my whole life with super strict parents - mom was an Olympian, and my father owned a construction company. My brother and I had to be up by 5:30AM for chores and exercising as this was also my moms routine. We were doing school work by 8:00AM with a small break around 10:30AM, then lunch at noon.
After lunch, we went out to help my father build houses, then off to sports practices (typically two separate practices for two different sports) and classes at the local college. By the end of the day you're exhausted!
A large part of why my parents were so strict is because we were really poor and my parents were determined to not only get out of poverty but also to teach us a good work ethic.
So part of me is really biased in thinking "these kids have an easy schedule, why is it so hard for them to get going in the morning?"
I wouldn't recommend my upbringing necessarily, but also can't help but wonder if kids had a stricter routine, regularly exercise, good diet, and family support if it wouldn't be slightly easier for them to start the day early.
But also on the flip-side I think it's great to let them sleep in because I remember how I felt, and how my friends felt.
Lastly, perhaps public education is partially at fault? Sitting in a classroom for hours every day is exhausting, so how about a more hands-on method of learning where kids actually stand at a white board and write out problems and solutions - something that might work in the lecture part of chemistry, physics, math, and perhaps other courses?
- We did this in homeschool as well as at the local college I attended and it absolutely helped me wrap my head around things better!
I ultimately have no dog in the fight as my family and I do our own thing, this is just my opinion.
> why is it so hard for them to get going in the morning
I get that there are a lot of valid cases where the answer is "homework", "circadian rhythms", "evolution", but...
80% of the answer here is electronics, and really just social media + smartphones. It's incredibly easy to stay up too late when you're hyperconnected and chatting with your classmates late into the night. It just wasn't even a possibility 20 years ago.
It's natural to blame this stuff on the latest bogeyman but I doubt it has anything to do with smartphones and social media specifically. I was in school before smartphones and social media, and I just stayed up until the small hours talking on the landline.
Kids and teenagers need some time to do their own thing, so given that most of the "waking hours" are filled with school and other things that we effectively force on them, of course they try to steal some hours for themselves where they can.
> It's incredibly easy to stay up too late when you're hyperconnected and chatting with your classmates late into the night. It just wasn't even a possibility 20 years ago.
I stayed up until 2 or 3 am reading books because I wasn’t tired. They’re staying up chatting with their friends because they’re not tired. The connection is the “not being tired.”
I grew up before social media, and I stayed up late reading books. "just one more chapter and then I'll go to sleep". And I'm not even a book nerd - I haven't read any fiction in over a decade now, it's just what we had. I think young people will find something no matter what.
It’s not the state in control of when children sleep, it’s business owners.
Children are dropped off at school at the time that allows the parents to get to work at the time required by their boss. And they’re picked up when their boss let’s them go.
The school day (in the form of sports/clubs etc) is extended to keep up with longer working days and the second parent having to work full time instead of part time.
And two parents have to work because they need the combined salary to make the mortgage work, for a home big enough for everyone.
We work too long and too much for too little and if we don’t address the root causes then little is going to really change
> And two parents have to work because they need the combined salary to make the mortgage work, for a home big enough for everyone.
This is the key right here.
I blame monetary policy for too-low interest rates, which drive up housing prices. I also blame over-restrictive zoning and other restrictions on building that cause houses to be more expensive.
> I blame monetary policy for too-low interest rates, which drive up housing prices. I also blame over-restrictive zoning and other restrictions on building that cause houses to be more expensive.
medium-term monetary policy hardly has anything to do with it. Rather, the paradigm of single-family zoning makes it pretty hard to build dense communities en-mass, so the shortage of supply has lead to ever-increasing home prices.
> Children are dropped off at school at the time that allows the parents to get to work at the time required by their boss. And they’re picked up when their boss let’s them go.
If only there were some way for students to get to school that wasn't their parents dropping them off. Some kind of bus maybe, but for students. We could call it a "school bus" perhaps.
Snark doesn't solve problems. When I was in middle school, it was a 45 minute bus ride. The same bus had to drop us off at 7:30 am so they could get back in time to pick up the elementary kids and get them to school on time. So the bus picked us up at 6:45 am which means we are waking up around 6:15 at the latest. That isn't sleeping in. The GP is right, the parents still need to be there for the 6th grader to get on the bus and ALSO make it to work on time at 8:00. Not everyone lives 5 minutes from work. In some rural areas parents have an hour drive even after their kids get on the bus or get dropped at daycare.
Where I live, middle school aged kids still run the risk of big trouble for being unsupervised. 6th grade starts at 11 years old. So the bus can drop them off and pick them up, but better be there when they leave and when they get home.
> That’s profoundly unsettling, particularly in light of data released by the CDC in April showing that 44 percent of high schoolers said they’d had “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” during the past year, and 20 percent had seriously contemplated suicide.
One second-order effect of Covid is that it completely confounds the statistics collection for a wide swathe of issues. With a huge one-off exogenous shock in emotional and physical well-being, it’s basically impossible to make inferences using these statistics from the last couple years.
Maybe we can compute the “Covid baseline impact” but because of the very regional response, it will be extremely hard to control for this factor.
This is ridiculous. The CDC doesn’t care about teenagers’ mental health. They’re using this specific effect as an argument for something they actually care about. School is itself deleterious to teenagers’ mental health. School causes suicide. This is as you would expect from an institution that constrains them from doing what they want and following their interests, that is hostile to their autonomy as such.
> What sticks out is a large decrease in teen suicide rates during the summer vacation months of June/July/August. In contrast, the somewhat older group sees, if anything, an increase in suicide rates in the summer. There’s also a drop in high school suicides in December, around winter vacation.
In the UK it's normal for schools to start around 9am. I thought this was some kind of avant gate experiment letting teens start at 11am, I would've loved that at 15. I didn't realise schools started so early in the states, 7am seems pretty sadistic to me
This was also a thing in Ireland. The school building opened at 7:30am, but it was basically just the principal and janitor in that early. As one of the kids getting dropped off relatively early (7:45am), I just did my homework in the school building until classes started at 9:15am, which meant my evenings were free.
There was no need to force all the other students to start earlier too. (And I would then nap in first period as a result of getting up early, which teachers would take in different ways. Some just left me, some would try catch me out by asking questions, but since I had just done the homework an hour before and read ahead on the material, usually I could answer)
I get it for kids younger than 8-10 (depending on the kid), but after that age kids should be able to get out of the house and to school on their own. For the youngest it can be solved with a before school program. The kids just need a place to eat breakfast and chill with their friends before the school day starts.
Early start times in the US long predate both the large growth and suburbs and the shift from almost all kids having a stay at home Mom to having both parents employed outside the home.
It is, and a lot of people seemed to take joy in putting kids through the wringer for no reason. Not only do some people enjoy doing that to kids, they are also proud of it, and make up reasons for why the borderline abuse is actually good for kids. At least that was my takeaway from growing up in the US, that adults can be pretty sadistic to the kids whose lives they're in charge of.
Wait until you hear how much vacation and health care we get. As pampered as Americans are in a lot of ways, we also screw ourselves over plenty. (But don't tell the citizens that, they think they don't have to do anything to get better living conditions)
Readit News
> That’s about to change in California, when a law—the first of its kind in the nation—goes into effect on July 1 requiring the state’s public high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m., and its middle schools no earlier than 8 a.m.
Wow. I may need to reassess my definition of “sleeping in”.
(Spoken as someone who had incredible difficulty getting to school by 8.50am back in the day and who hasn’t gotten up before 10.30am in the last week!)
It is absurd how early schools start. Objectively, there was no good reason why I had to be on my spot on the field at 7:08a every morning only to be done by 2:50p.
Another explanation I've read is to make room in the afternoon schedule for varsity sports practice. Honestly I'm not sure which is worse.
It’s actually deeply annoying for my daughter’s high school. It already started 1st period at 830, but since 0 period no longer “counts”, the day is getting extended by almost an hour for all students.
This is from an email from our district earlier in the year:
The exceptions to this are zero period classes. Since zero period classes are optional and not required, these classes may begin before 8:30 AM; they just cannot be used to meet the instructional minute's requirements of 64,800 annual schoolwide instructional minutes
In the afternoon, I was the last dropoff, which I thought was grossly unfair.
I've managed to train myself to fall asleep on the way back and wake up when the noise in the bus quiets down, in between the second to last and my stop.
I honestly think our schools are a generally a massive waste of time and money, as they are now. Meaning, they meed to i prove. They have basically become daycare centers. The education is really not good, and no one is learning anything. Then you graduate only to be greeted with the basically mandatory acceptance of debt and another four years of extended high school or a lifetime of labor jobs.
When I got to the army I needed to constantly get up at around 0530. What I found out is that it's not a problem for me (and I firmly believed it would be nearly impossible) if I go to sleep early enough. It worked for most of people around me as well. Since then I don't think getting up earlier or later really matters, I decide it based on the stuff I want to do and not the other way around.
They wouldn't lock the door at my school, but teachers would generally give you detention when you arrived late. Teachers would also take it personally if you didn't have the textbook for their class with you despite there not being nearly enough time to get to your locker and back. Add to that the fact that teachers often would still be trying to finish things up when the bell rang and wouldn't let us leave, and we'd end up with the perfect storm of being forced to strain to carry all of the textbooks for most of the day just to avoid detention but then end up still being late due to not being let out on time and having to walk slowly because of the said textbooks. And then they'd occasionally lecture us for ruining our posture with our heavy bags like we had any control over the situation...
This was very unfortunate as I lived in another state and had to sit 2 hours in public transit, so I had to wake up at 5:45.
I remember almost sleeping after lunch and not learning anything because I was too tired.
This stuff should be fixed everywhere. Getting up this early is not helpful.
My elementary school started at 9. I don't remember when junior high started, but high school was 8:40 I think for homeroom.
Then school ended at 3. If kids are starting school at 7, when does their day end? What excuse are schools giving for this?
I just couldn't have coped classes starting that early.
I’d peg roughly 9:30 am as a good time for high schools to start.
I mean... 7am, I get... 7:17?! Did someone throw the dart at the clock and hit the 17 minute mark?
Good luck if you did a sport. I remember hearing some elite fencers talk and all of them said essentially "yeah...I didn't get a lot of sleep in high school". That's not some innocuous hard work ethic mindset. That's messing with a developing brain and depriving it of a necessary resource.
It pisses me off that we're just realizing that this culture of torturing teenagers is maybe not the best idea.
Even today, in my 30s, a day or two with poor sleep will make a noticeable mood dip regardless of circumstances.
But as an older adult, I naturally wake up at 6:00 every morning. It was the same for much of my childhood except a few years of high school. So perhaps this was a developmental thing.
University labs were always 8 AM, so wasn't much of a choice to try to do later, especially in the first two or three undergrad years. Even at that age, it was still a struggle. Why not night lab? Surely there's a doctoral student willing to attend to some freshmen doing reactions at 8 PM, right?
A very beaten dead-horse, but look at Japan:
Elementary Schools and Middle Schools placed within a MAXIMUM 10min walking pace distance at that age group’s walking pace.
High Schoolers able to commute to their school of choice due to robust public transportation network.
We have designed cities that create as byproducts incredible amount of self-inflicted wounds on our culture. We don’t have to live this way. This is a choice.
Parents go to work or send their kids off. A parent personally accompanying a student to school is an indicator of something having gone wrong.
(It also applies to other extracurricular sports, but I doubt anyone really worries about play practice schedules)
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Well, except when they have to get out the door before 6:15am...
Any parent that wants to torture their kid with a 7am start is free to do so.
That choice however shoulsnt dictate the school time for everyone else.
Early birds can show up to a long recess pre-class time but class should only start at 10am or so
A two hour period from waking to being in first period seemed pretty normal, and even if you subtract that from a “more generous” 9am, you still get 7am, which is pretty brutal on adolescents which are known to have shifted sleep schedules.
Assuming you can fall asleep at midnight, sure.
It certainly was given the default sleep schedule I had as a teen.
> Go to sleep by midnight
This wasn't something I could intentionally choose to do as a teenager without the use of drugs like melatonin.
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After lunch, we went out to help my father build houses, then off to sports practices (typically two separate practices for two different sports) and classes at the local college. By the end of the day you're exhausted!
A large part of why my parents were so strict is because we were really poor and my parents were determined to not only get out of poverty but also to teach us a good work ethic.
So part of me is really biased in thinking "these kids have an easy schedule, why is it so hard for them to get going in the morning?"
I wouldn't recommend my upbringing necessarily, but also can't help but wonder if kids had a stricter routine, regularly exercise, good diet, and family support if it wouldn't be slightly easier for them to start the day early.
But also on the flip-side I think it's great to let them sleep in because I remember how I felt, and how my friends felt.
Lastly, perhaps public education is partially at fault? Sitting in a classroom for hours every day is exhausting, so how about a more hands-on method of learning where kids actually stand at a white board and write out problems and solutions - something that might work in the lecture part of chemistry, physics, math, and perhaps other courses? - We did this in homeschool as well as at the local college I attended and it absolutely helped me wrap my head around things better!
I ultimately have no dog in the fight as my family and I do our own thing, this is just my opinion.
I get that there are a lot of valid cases where the answer is "homework", "circadian rhythms", "evolution", but...
80% of the answer here is electronics, and really just social media + smartphones. It's incredibly easy to stay up too late when you're hyperconnected and chatting with your classmates late into the night. It just wasn't even a possibility 20 years ago.
Kids and teenagers need some time to do their own thing, so given that most of the "waking hours" are filled with school and other things that we effectively force on them, of course they try to steal some hours for themselves where they can.
I stayed up until 2 or 3 am reading books because I wasn’t tired. They’re staying up chatting with their friends because they’re not tired. The connection is the “not being tired.”
If anything, that teaches people to hate work (and life).
Children are dropped off at school at the time that allows the parents to get to work at the time required by their boss. And they’re picked up when their boss let’s them go.
The school day (in the form of sports/clubs etc) is extended to keep up with longer working days and the second parent having to work full time instead of part time.
And two parents have to work because they need the combined salary to make the mortgage work, for a home big enough for everyone.
We work too long and too much for too little and if we don’t address the root causes then little is going to really change
This is the key right here.
I blame monetary policy for too-low interest rates, which drive up housing prices. I also blame over-restrictive zoning and other restrictions on building that cause houses to be more expensive.
medium-term monetary policy hardly has anything to do with it. Rather, the paradigm of single-family zoning makes it pretty hard to build dense communities en-mass, so the shortage of supply has lead to ever-increasing home prices.
If only there were some way for students to get to school that wasn't their parents dropping them off. Some kind of bus maybe, but for students. We could call it a "school bus" perhaps.
One second-order effect of Covid is that it completely confounds the statistics collection for a wide swathe of issues. With a huge one-off exogenous shock in emotional and physical well-being, it’s basically impossible to make inferences using these statistics from the last couple years.
Maybe we can compute the “Covid baseline impact” but because of the very regional response, it will be extremely hard to control for this factor.
https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/mental-health/index.htm#:~:....
> What sticks out is a large decrease in teen suicide rates during the summer vacation months of June/July/August. In contrast, the somewhat older group sees, if anything, an increase in suicide rates in the summer. There’s also a drop in high school suicides in December, around winter vacation.
https://www.basilhalperin.com/essays/school-and-teen-suicide...
A ridiculous justification, of course, but that's what you get with a combination of helicopter parenting and a society overreliant on cars.
There was no need to force all the other students to start earlier too. (And I would then nap in first period as a result of getting up early, which teachers would take in different ways. Some just left me, some would try catch me out by asking questions, but since I had just done the homework an hour before and read ahead on the material, usually I could answer)
It is, and a lot of people seemed to take joy in putting kids through the wringer for no reason. Not only do some people enjoy doing that to kids, they are also proud of it, and make up reasons for why the borderline abuse is actually good for kids. At least that was my takeaway from growing up in the US, that adults can be pretty sadistic to the kids whose lives they're in charge of.