Sleepless Everywhere
Today's kids are a groggy group. That not only makes them moody and irritable — it prevents them from learning.
When he was younger, he (almost always) bounded out of bed. But by the time he was 8 or 9, you needed a crane to lift him. Now 13, he sits zombie-like in class and tries, if possible, to nap during assembly. Around 4 p.m., just as soccer practice begins, he feels an energy surge that dips around 7 only to spike again at around 10 p.m. Repeated reminders to go to bed are ignored. You lose this nightly bedtime battle because he is now wide awake, IM-ing friends until midnight, forgetting how flat-out exhausted he was earlier. Come the weekend, he binge-sleeps until noon because that's the only way he can at least be ambulatory during the upcoming week.
The Sleep-Challenged Child
How Much Is Enough?
Rest for the Weary
If this sounds like your child, you have plenty of company. While children, like adults, vary in the amount of sleep they need, how quickly they fall asleep, as well as how long it takes to re-settle once they wake during the night, today's kids are a decidedly groggy group. A poll released earlier this year by The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) found that more than two-thirds of children, newborn to 10 years old, sleep less than they should — less than even their parents realize. Many fail to meet the minimum recommended hours during a 24-hour period. What's going on?
The Sleep-Challenged Child
Blame it on biology and lifestyle. Children's sleep problems run the gamut from a reluctance to go to bed in the first place, night wakings, and nightmares, to sleepwalking, bed-wetting or obstructive sleep apnea, a condition marked by a brief period when breathing stops.
The "architecture" of sleep also changes as we age, notes Cornell psychology professor James B. Maas, Ph.D., a leading sleep researcher and author of Power Sleep. Babies may sleep for 16 hours, half of it in the deepest phase, but by age 7 or 8, children spend more time in the light sleep phase and, as a result, are more likely to be awakened by noises, light, even stress.
When kids hit puberty and adolescence, they actually need more, not less, sleep — and not getting it can have serious consequences for learning, long-term memory and safety. In the mid-90s, a Brown University survey of 3,000 Rhode Island high-school students revealed that, on average, teens were sleeping 7.3 hours each night. Fifteen percent slept 8.5 hours and a whopping 26 percent managed only 6.5 hours or less. With sports practices and games, homework and social activities jamming weekends, they're not catching up then, either.
"I see children walking around in a perpetual grey cloud," notes sleep researcher Mary Carskadon, Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, who directed the study. "But they ignore the bad feelings and get used to feeling terrible. They have no idea what it feels like to be well rested."
Paradoxically, a child's sleep problems catch most parents by surprise. Having stumbled through middle-of-the-night feedings of infancy and the one-more-drink-please stage of preschoolers, they assume that, barring the occasional illness, their child will get a solid night's sleep — and so will they. But sometimes, kids bring a long list of worries to bed: problems at school or with friends; anxiety about an impending move, birth of a sibling, illness or stress in the family; or fears about what they've seen on the nightly news. What's more, a sleep-deprived child isn't always easy to spot, by even the most attentive parent.
"Kids insist they're not tired," says Maas. "Rather than go to sleep, they'll fight against it. They can be overactive, irritable and argumentative. In school, they may fidget, become easily distracted, or misbehave — often leading to misdiagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder." Then, too, many parents are sleep-deprived themselves, and that can make it difficult for them to evaluate clearly what's going on. "When you're working longer hours, and not seeing your kids as much as you would like, it can be hard to stay on top of their sleep requirements," notes Carskadon. But it's wrong, experts say, to keep kids awake because a parent's schedule is irregular.
"Parents don't realize that pushing bedtime back to share quality time at the end of the day, or letting children stay up until Dad comes home and roughhouses with them in the living room, is ultimately self-defeating," notes Maas. "If youngsters are sleep-deprived, the time isn't going to be high quality anyway."
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How Much Is Enough?
While it's become a point of pride to brag about how little sleep we need to feel rested, many people underestimate the number of hours they need. "Between the seventh and eighth hour is critical for kids and adults," Maas notes. "That's when we get almost an hour of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, when the mind repairs itself, grows new connections and puts it all together." Periods of REM sleep occur about every 90 minutes, and get longer as the night progresses. "If you sleep only six hours, you miss important repair and prepare time," he adds. Research at the National Center on Sleep Disorders at The National Institutes of Health (NIH) shows that children who regularly sleep nine hours perform better in school, are happier, suffer fewer accidents, and are less likely to develop weight or emotional problems later on than those who try to function on less.
As kids enter the teenage years, physiological changes in the brain that regulate sleep and waking literally hard-wire them to stay up longer and sleep later. Unfortunately, that's precisely the time they must be at school. (A high schooler's day often starts before 7 a.m. — when the students' bodies are there, but their brains are still asleep.) Add homework, sports activities, music lessons, TV and chatting with friends online, and most kids have little time to catch up on sleep.
"Sleep-deprived kids are unable to learn," says Maas. "Memory, concentration, communication skills as well as critical and creative thinking are all adversely affected."
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Rest for the Weary
Unfortunately, in our fast-paced, multi-tasking society, sleep is low on most people's priority list. "But sleep is not a vast wasteland of inertness," explains Maas. "It's an elaborate series of stages that are vital for daily functioning." Teach that to your children — the earlier the better — and you'll find that most nighttime problems are transient and treatable. To maximize restful sleep:
- Calculate his sleep needs. Most school-age children need 9 or 10 hours of sleep. But everyone is different and insisting that a child go to sleep when he's not tired is a recipe for disaster. Maas suggests putting children to bed at the same time every day for one week and tracking the time they wake up. Then establish a bedtime and keep the same sleep/wake schedule every day. That includes weekends and vacations.
- Cut caffeine. Check the label on that new flavor of cola, water, or sports drink. Cola drinks may contain as much as 23 mg of caffeine. Ditto for iced tea. Chocolate milk? That'll be 5 mg; a chocolate candy bar, 6 mg. A small scoop of coffee ice cream packs a whopping 58 mg. After 2 p.m., decaf your kids.
- Establish calming bedtime rituals. That means no stimulating activities, such as watching TV, playing video games, or even surfing the Web for at least a half-hour before lights out. After a shower or bath, suggest snuggling under the covers and chatting quietly, or allowing her to read or listen to quiet music or an audio-book.
- Keep him moving. Exercise is critical, but not close to bedtime — three hours before bedtime at the latest. "Exercise raises core body temperature and stimulates the release of adrenaline," explains Maas. "If he comes home from soccer and tries to go right to bed, he'll be too alert to sleep."
- Hone time-management skills. As the homework load increases, and time is eaten up by extracurricular activities, many preteens and teens find it hard to figure out just how long that English paper will take — and they stay up very late to do it. Insisting that a teen turn his light out at 11 p.m. will get you nowhere fast. Better to have him learn from experience that he probably won't get a good grade on a paper that was written at 2 a.m. the night before it was due. Your child does have a lot on his plate, however, and you help him the most by making sure he knows how to take notes, organize his work, and schedule his life so he finishes projects in a timely manner. Buy him a personal planner, and show him how to plot out his week, noting hockey practices and dentist appointments as well as math tests.
