Need your morning fix of caffeine-rich coffee or tea? Well, apparently so does a growing whole of middle school children, high schoolers, and college students. It's cheap and trendy, sure, but beneath the wanna-be-cool mentality, like many adults, our kids are not getting enough sleep.
So what, right? There's work to be done and fun to be had, so what unlikeness can missing a miniature shuteye make?
Kaiser Medical
Plenty!
When a toddler skips his nap, irritability is a sure bet-so is a very long afternoon for his caretaker, as any parent will attest. Actually, it's pretty much the same for older kids, too-and then some.
Unfortunately, according to a National Sleep Foundation survey, 90% of American parents think their children are getting enough sleep, but they're wrong. 60% of surveyed high schoolers admitted to feeling "extreme daytime tiredness," and 25% indeed said they fall asleep in class at least once a week.
How much sleep should children be getting? Your 3- to 6-year-old needs between 10 and 12 hours every night, while your 7- to 12-year-old should be sleeping for 10 or 11. As for those 12 and older, they need about 9 hours a night, but...
Sleep Facts:
• 50% of all adolescents get less than 7 hours of sleep on weeknights.
• High school seniors median only slightly more than 6.5 hours of sleep each night.
• Only 5% of high school seniors median 8 hours of sleep each night.
• Children, elementary-aged straight through high school, get about one hour less of sleep each night than they would have 30 years ago-even kindergarteners.
It's happening for a whole of reasons. For instance, according to a recent Kaiser house Foundation study, our 8- to 18-year-olds are spending more than 7.5 hours with their electronic devices every day, up from 6.5 hours five years ago. And that doesn't comprise the median 1.5 hours texting, and an additional one 30 minutes chatting away on their cell phones.
In other words, your child may be upstairs in her bedroom late at night, but she might not be sleeping.
Other reasons for all this sleeplessness:
1. Too many after-school activities, such as music lessons and gymnastics.
2. Athletics-and games that enlarge well into the night.
3. A heavy homework load.
4. Poor use of time and lack of a study/school work schedule.
5. Unenforced bedtimes.
6. School start times.
The price? Our sleep-deprived children are more restless, irritable, and impulsive than their better-rested peers. But that's not all.
Children's brains are a work-in-progress until about the age of 21, so lack of sleep has dramatic consequences on our young people, including:
• Poor academic achievement
• Emotional issues, such as depression, moodiness, and lower self-esteem
• concentration issues
• Weight problems
When it comes to academics, lack of sleep diminishes fluency, problem-solving ability, even creativity. Moreover, a University of Minnesota study of 7,000 high schoolers found that A students sleep about 15 minutes longer than B students, who median 11 more minutes of sleep than C students, who sleep about 10 minutes more than those earning a D. Moreover, those results have been replicated in countless other studies.
Emotionally speaking, a Columbia University healing Center's observe of almost 16,000 teens and their parents found that middle and high school students whose parents don't insist that they bed down before midnight on school nights are 42% more likely to be depressed than those who go to bed by 10:00 p.m. Or earlier. Plus, those late-nighters are also more likely to have had suicidal thoughts in the past year.
As for concentration issues, says Dr. Alan Green, "Add is an important problem in its own right, but explore in sleep laboratories has shown that some (and perhaps a great many) kids are mislabeled with Add when the real problem is chronic, partial sleep deprivation." Moreover, experts agree that even when not misdiagnosed, sleep issues in Add/Adhd children and adolescents should be checked, as sleep problems are reported in 25% to 50% of such cases.
And, yes, lack of sleep can even put on the pounds. Because sleep impacts how we store fat and burn calories, those not getting enough tend to be not just overweight but obese. Moreover, since most school nutrition-education programs have failed-at a cost of a billion dollars annually-and television and other sedentary pursuits have been pretty much ruled out, sleep is getting more concentration as the culprit.
Meanwhile, despite all the evidence, children's sleep needs are seldom part of the equation when it comes to school hours in the United States. 85% of our high schools start before 8:15 a.m., and 35% start before 7:30 every morning.
Despite the fact that elementary-aged kids are commonly up with the sun, their school day doesn't start until 9:05 a.m. Meanwhile, middle school students start at 8:05 a.m, while high schoolers are in class at 7:25 every morning-even though they went to bed much later than their younger siblings.
Does it matter? Oh, yes.
Tel Aviv University's Dr. Avi Saheh, an authority in the field, proved the relationship between sleep and performance after learning 77 fourth and sixth graders, having some bed down about 30 minutes earlier than usual, and the other half, 30 minutes later. His conclusion: "A loss of one hour of sleep is equivalent to [the loss of] two years of cognitive maturation and development." In other words, your slightly sleep-deprived sixth grader is likely to perform more like a fourth grader.
Besides establishing earlier bedtimes, one solution, of course, is to push your school district for a scheduling change.
They've done it in Edina, a Minneapolis suburb, now beginning their high schoolers at 8:30 instead of 7:25 in the morning, and the results have been dramatic. The year before, Sat math and verbal scores averaged 1288 for the top 10% of students. After the switch, the top 10% averaged 1500 on those Sat's.
And when the high school start time in Lexington, Kentucky was moved up one hour, its immature car urgency rate dropped 16%; the rest of the state saw a 9% increase.
In other words, a good night's sleep is important for our kids' condition and well-being, so be sure to set a uncostly bedtime for yours-and stick to it. comprise a miniature wind-down time in the mix, close the blinds against the evening light, and consider putting cell phones on the kitchen counter, since so many children are adept at texting in the dark. Being well-rested helps ensure peak performance all day long.
And don't forget to hit the sack early enough yourself in order to get the important 8-1/2 hours of sleep you need every night. Everybody will be the great for it.
dig this Are Your Kids Getting adequate Zzzz's?
No comments:
Post a Comment