Sure, and I feel like shit each of the days after that dozen nights a year. In those cases it’s randomized and there aren’t thousands if other sleep deprived people on the roads. Now that I have kids I don’t get to go to bed early the next night to make up for the lack of sleep so it takes me a week to catch back up on my sleep.
I’m not a parent, but it’s my understanding that small children have a very difficult time adjusting their body clock to arbitrary changes in what clocks say, which makes life difficult for kids having trouble with what to them is a new schedule and for the rest of the household coping with said kid.
Pets can be difficult about this, too.
I mean, the stats about driving don’t lie, so I guess it’s a thing. It seems some people have much more ritualized sleep schedules; mine varies so much that whether I get 6 hours of sleep or 9 hours of sleep, it makes no difference to me–that’s just the way I’ve been my whole life; I don’t have a set bedtime so I could get X hours of sleep. I just know I have to be up by 6:45 a.m. and as long as I get at least 6, I’m good.
That said, it still did take a couple days to fully naturally wake up before my alarm (like I normally do) because my body is set to the light level of the bedroom, and I could ballpark the time based on the amount of light. It adjusts incrementally day by day, as the days get longer or shorter, so when it jumps ahead by an hour overnight, there is some adjustment. For me, it happens not to be a major one, but I get that other people are different.
Please allow me to enlighten you. I was a high school teacher for 25+ years. The entire WEEK after the change to DST meant cranky, tired kids. Teens tend to be sleep-deprived anyway, due in part to their brain chemistry (Melatonin levels don’t rise in teens until later at night.) and early start times at school. An hour less sleep is more than enough to tip them into serious sleep deprivation.
If they were merely vacationing in a different time zone, they could sleep later, and they wouldn’t be expected to learn and retain information the next morning.
When my kids were little, I had another struggle on my hands. Trying to convince a little kid to feel sleepy when the sun hasn’t set yet is an exercise in futility. And the next morning, the clock may say it’s 6 a.m., but their bodies say it’s only 5 a.m…
There’s no good reason to put kids–and the rest of us–through this.
If you want a good laugh, read the eighth and last paragraphs of this obituary from 2013. Only obit I ever saw that went viral, and it’s relevant to this thread.
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sunherald/obituary.aspx?n=harry-stamps&pid=163538353&fhid=4025
Again, thanks for all of the responses.
For those who have difficulty adjusting to a one hour shift in the spring, I found one thing that helps me. Start getting up 1/2 hour early the week before the official time change. Then change clocks the day of the time change.
You think you have something to complain about? See the link above. Britain used to shift the clock by TWO hours.
I’m shuddering about when the Age of COVID ends and mom and dad have to go back to working outside the home, the destruction pets alone at home again will do.
AFAICT, Princess Allie adapted when DH went back to work after a broken leg had kept him home for several months (I was working the whole time. “Essential” financial call center, making less than unemployment was paying). Her only apparent issue was that with me commuting by bus and getting home a good deal later, her evening canned gunk was served later.
The last time I experienced a seasonal clock change was spring 1991, when I lived in Albuquerque. Ever since then, I’ve been living in Hawaii or Thailand.
But I was never put out by the time changes. I pulled a lot of graveyard shifts back in Texas, and it often meant an extra hour’s pay. True, six months later it could mean being shorted an hour, but if I was off it meant an extra hour in the bar, the 2am closing time being magically pushed back an hour at the stroke of two.
Me! Me! I live near Philly, and there a several months a year during the winter when it is dark when I drive into work and dark when I leave it to drive home. Well, not now, in the pandemic. I’m working from home so it doesn’t matter. But when I was going into the office, I was driving about 50 miles/90-120 minutes each way so no matter how you sliced it, it was DARK. It might be sunlight when I get to work or twilight when I left, but most of that time was as DARK as a Vogon cargo hold.
[quote=“Siam_Sam, post:110, topic:937707, full:true”]
The last time I experienced a seasonal clock change was spring 1991, when I lived in Albuquerque. Ever since then, I’ve been living in Hawaii or Thailand.
But I was never put out by the time changes. I pulled a lot of graveyard shifts back in Texas, and it often meant an extra hour’s pay. True, six months later it could mean being shorted an hour, but if I was off it meant an extra hour in the bar, the 2am closing time being magically pushed back an hour at the stroke of two.
[/quote] Time changes make me physically sick. I get sick to my stomach if I stay up too late, and I can’t work graveyard shifts at all. I am very sensitive to changes in my biorhythmic habits. 
Again, quite a bit of electricity is saved. And here in the spring months, I really like the extra hour of daylight in the evening after work is done. Yes, that means the sun is just coming up when i get up, but I dont want or need daylight then. It is nice to sit in the backyard and read a book and get some sun.
Except that Christmas had nothing whatsoever to do with Having a feast and exchanging presents until Charlemagne.
Cite on that last?
I concur. It really has little effect except maybe on Sunday morning, the day that most of us can sleep in anyway. I spend maybe 5 minutes resetting a couple of clocks, that’s it.
There is a hour less sleep on exactly one day- Sunday, when the kids can sleep til noon if the parents allow it.
Frickin’ Hebrew school, man…
Well, Ok, many kids.
Sure, let the kids sleep in on Sunday. Then there is the hard wake up time on Monday. It’s not about losing an hour of sleep, it’s about re-setting your body clock, and for kids who don’t always have the discipline/ability to go to bed an hour earlier, they easily can be sleep deprived.
Apparently, it may not be that easy for all adults either.
Fatal crashes up 6% the week after DST.
And @thorny_locust has already posted a link about Heart attacks going up 24% after DST.
One reason for increased accidents I experienced was when driving East in the morning, for about a week the sun would be perfectly aligned with the road making seeing the traffic signals an brake lights hard to see. Just as the sun is getting high enough to see again, we set the clocks ahead and now we spend another week fighting to see. We had many people wreck due to this and not having some really strong sunglasses.