TOW #24 Poor Sleep Affects Children’s Thoughts and Emotions By: Joseph A. Buckhalt

What I plan on working on in this tow is to focus on the details. I plan on having the details to be many and prevalent in my work.  I will have the details back up my argument and not have a broad statement back up my argument. I will also try and have a better conclusion. I will try and end my conclusion with a "so what" question at the end to strengthen my conclusion.

Children have always complained that since they did not get enough sleep they will not be at their full potential. This has been the mantra for many people, while others argue that with less sleep they feel more alert. Dr. Buckhalt explains to the audience in this article the former statement is actually correct. Children with more sleep are bound to get better grades than those who do not get enough sleep. Through different lab testings and statistics the doctors can show this occur. With their new found knowledge they have also proposed a solution for schools that are worried about their student sleep cycle. This article uses, functional magnetic resonance-imaging (fMRI) to prove that without sleep students are not well equipped for the outside world. 

In the second paragraph of the article Dr. Buckhalt explains to his audience that with the help of fMRI doctors and psychologists will be able to analyze what is happening in the brain when the student does not get any sleep and when a student does get sleep. In the lab experiment they took 7-11 year old students who had a sleep apnea and some who did not. They split the two groups into the control and the experimental. Both groups underwent the same set of testing, one was for cognition and how well the students thought, while the other tested empathy and feeling. Both groups did well on the cognitive tests. However the tests for feeling was quite different. Student who had enough sleep did well on their tests while children who did not sleep well were mean and nasty during their tests. Proving that with lack of sleep children are less empathetic towards others.

The author in this article was talking to a variety of people. The main group of people whom he talked to was the masses or general people. Since most people have gone through school he was trying to tap into that idea of how they or their child has had to stay up late and work on projects so that they can get a better grade. The article was also speaking directly to school boards. It was almost even an attack on school boards by saying that students are given too much work and are punished for trying to get better grades.

I believe that the author did a wonderful job at portraying the problems associated with students not getting enough sleep. He was able to use the lab experiment to support his point and did so in a convincing way.