Help Your Child By Implementing Better Sleep Habits

Back to School time is a time of stress for many children and parents.  This time of year brings fears of finding the right friends, getting good grades, and making the right decisions.  All these things factor into a well-lived childhood and impact all the way into adulthood.  What if there was one simple habit that would help your child ace their way through all these fears?  One little thing that would make their life so much better, their grades increase, their decision-making skills accel, and their ability to concentrate increase.  Sound like a miracle cure?  Sound too good to be true?  It is not.  This simple habit that you can help your child with is SLEEP MORE.

We’ve covered child sleep health before on our blog, click here for that story.  This week though we want to remind you about the importance of good sleep habits for your child, especially now at the start of the school year.  What better time to implement a new way to succeed in life?

Bad News First

Children with bad sleep habits have been studied for generations.  Old science and new science both agree that children need more sleep than adults.  It wasn’t until recently though that science has proven what happens when children don’t get enough sleep and proven what happens when they do get enough.  

Bad sleep habits in children lead to concentration issues.  Concentration as in learning skills, also as in behavioral development. Yes, development not just a short time thing, but a development of good behavior in which the child has a better attention span, and self-control.  Bad sleep habits can be and have been shown to be causes of misdiagnosis of ADD and ADHD, both attention deficit issues.  The irony here is that the medicine prescribed to children for these issues is known to cause issues with getting to sleep, therefore leading to even more sleep deprivation.

We know that’s a scary paragraph, it was meant to be.  Parents need to see the seriousness involved in their child getting enough sleep.  Unfortunately, there is more that is caused by child sleep deprivation.  

Another serious implication of sleep deprivation is weight gain.  Lack of sleep leads to poor eating habits.  We all know that children have poor eating habits as it is, but the issue becomes even more severe when a child lacks sleep.  Their snacking increases, their increased tiredness leads to inactivity, and both of those factors lead to weight gain.  Childhood weight gain is a serious issue in the United States, could it be that sleep deprivation is a huge factor in that?

So what’s the good news?  Where’s the silver lining? 

The good news is that instituting good sleep habits isn’t hard.  It’s easier than you think.  Set a bedtime, enforce the bedtime.  Make it an everyday thing, not just weekdays.  Make sure all electronics are shut off and away from their bedroom.  At our house, we go so far as to lock out the internet to all electronics other than the ones we are using ourselves.  This way you ensure that no sneaky video game playing is occurring.  

The better news is that once good sleep habits are enforced, children show a quick recovery in learning skills.  They show a quick turnaround in the grades and their memory retention.  

Sleep is that important

Sleep is as important, if not more, than diet and exercise.  All three, Sleep Diet and Exercise, are legs in a stool of good health both for adults and children.  Young minds are sponges, imagine taking away the ability to remember essential life skills and expecting your child to excel into adulthood.  It just won’t happen.  We all love our children, let’s help them by giving them great sleep habits.