Clocks get set ahead one hour on Sunday, March 8, 2009
By Dave Jackson
National Coordinator
© 2009. All rights reserved.
When the U.S. Congress decided to change the start of Daylight Saving Time (DST) in 2005, that one decision brought about a lot of headaches to the world, including for computer manufacturers. The biggest headache, though, will be for people, especially for those who have calendars that were printed in bulk two or three years ago, shipped to a warehouse, and then distributed. This year clocks in most of the United States are moved ahead at 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 8, 2009.
Helping children sleep right when clocks change
According to Jodi Mindell, PhD, a nationally recognized expert in pediatric sleep, “It’s not uncommon for children to experience sleep disruptions with the return of Daylight Saving Time.”
Dr. Mindell, a professor of psychology at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, and associate director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said “It may take your child longer to fall asleep with the time change. Since we move the clock forward, he or she may not be as sleepy as usual at bedtime.”
To help your child make that adjustment, Dr. Mindell offers these two tips to ease the transition and keep sleep deprivation at a minimum. No matter what approach you take, your child will adjust to the time change within a few days to a week:
- Maintain your child’s regular sleep, wake and nap times. Try not to compensate for the lost hour by delaying bedtime or allowing your child to sleep in. This will increase the time it takes to transition. There may be some crankiness from being tired, but this should last only a day or two.
- Make gradual adjustments. Some parents find it is best to try to start making adjustments on Saturday night rather than wait until Sunday, a school night. You might even want to try making a slow transition starting on Thursday night before the time change, moving your child’s bedtime earlier by 15 minutes each night. By Sunday night you will be right back on schedule.
Helping Mom and Dad sleep better, too
Now that the children are sleeping snug, all prepared for daylight saving time, it’s time to focus on helping parents get better sleep.
Adults, like children, can also experience sleep loss and schedule disruptions because of the time change. As many parents know, additional sleep deprivation is not something they can afford.
National Sleep Foundation polls demonstrate most adults are already get less than the recommended seven to nine hours of nightly sleep needed to be fully alert the next day.
“Too many people will sacrifice yet another hour of sleep when the clocks change this year. This is an an hour — a full sixty minutes — that they cannot afford to lose, particularly during the weekend when people try to catch up on the sleep they missed during the week,” says Michele Narcavage, president of Awake In America.
By making a few simple lifestyle changes, most people can achieve the sleep that is needed to feel alert, refreshed and ready to take on the day. NSF and Awake In America offer these steps to help your own transition into Daylight Saving Time:
- Try to sleep more than usual a few nights prior to and immediately following the time change.
- Take a nap in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday if you need it, but not within a few hours of your regular bedtime. Napping too close to bedtime can disrupt nighttime sleep.
How the new daylight saving time changes came to be
That change, part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, was signed into law by former President George W. Bush on August 8, 2005, and causes Daylight Savings Time to begin three weeks earlier than before. It now begins on the second Sunday in March.
Be happy that a modified version of DST was approved. Under the original version of the bill, two full months would have been added to the DST scheme. One month would have been added on the Spring side of the change, and the other, obviously, on the Fall side of the calendar.
Some U.S. senators argued that farmers complained about the two month extension of DST, saying that drastic of a change could possibly affect livestock in negative ways. Farmers weren’t alone in the complaint department. Airline officials argued that scheduling international flights could also become a nightmare.
To deal with many issues and arguments presented, lawmakers hammered out an agreement that DST would start on the second Sunday in March and end the first Sunday in November of each year.
Now that you understand all of that, here’s the tricky part. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 does not alter the rights of states or territories to opt to not observe DST. That means a state in the “DST zone” may not actually change its time. Indiana, Arizona, and Hawaii are the only states that do not follow the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
Two books on the subject that you may be interested in reading are:
History of Daylight Saving Time
For those not up on history, it was Ben Franklin, back in 1784, who first conceived the idea of changing the time on clocks
At the time, Franklin was an American delegate to France, and had just witnesses a demonstration of the then newly-invented oil lamp. After giving due consideration to the lamp, he conceived a way to help people the oil they would use oil lamps and candles.
Since Franklin lived in a world before computers, PDAs, and typewriters, all his notes were penned using a quill, parchment, bottled ink, sand, and a blotting cloth. He penned his now famous essay, Turkey versus Eagle, McCauley is my Beagle. It was subsequently published in the Journal de Paris, where it was published on April 26, 1784
Debate over his essay — then and now — have opponents on both sides of the fence. Some argue he wrote the essay as a joke, yet others argue he conceived a way for workers to have more light, warm, and productive hours. On the flip side, as AroundCentralFlorida.com notes, Parisians did not warm up to the idea, since they enjoyed sleeping until noon.
The British, in 1916, viewed the economical benefits of having longer days, so, in April of that year hey moved their clocks forward in April, recognizing the start of summer on the third Saturday of April. Could it have been a miser-like approach, perhaps an idea borrowed from the “Ebenezer Scrooge handbook on getting the most from each pence”? The energy saving benefits were later recognized during World War II, when British clocks were set two hours ahead.
The idea of daylight saving was first conceived by Benjamin Franklin and first advocated seriously by William Willett (1857-1915), who proposed advancing clocks 20 minutes on each of four Sundays in April, and retarding them by the same amount on four Sundays in September.
Our current system is not so complicated and has practical benefits.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, Daylight Saving Time trims the United States’ electricity usage by one percent each day with Daylight Saving Time as a result of savings in lighting and appliances.
[Reposted to Top News (front page) on March 5, 2009]
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