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Routine bedtime: A Priority for children |
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Today's generations of children is up at all hours. In the US up to 25% of children now suffer from sleep problems ranging from sleep walking to hormonal disruptions that can slow their growth.
Children are hit much harder by sleep deprivation. Children need sleep like they need food. If they don't get enough, it affects everything else in their lives.
Deep sleep triggers releases of human growth hormone (HGH), lack of which causes a tendency to be underweight among children. Release of the hormone partly depends on body temperatures during sleep. Sleep brings a temperature drop and hormone surge. If a child stay awake, his temperature remains high and HGH can stay bottled up.
An odd sleep schedule can also disrupt other body chemicals. Thyroid hormones (which affect energy levels) can be thrown off, as can cortisol, which helps the body respond to stress - when being chased on the playground or fighting off infection - and help control the levels of sugar in the blood.
Children with sleep debts are often cranky, have a shortened attention span, and are irritable, frenetic, and impatient. Such children may have a hard time making friends and they can be too erratic to maintain friendships.
Sleep-deprived children also often perform poorly in school because they can't follow directions. Parents are often behind these problems, they simply don't make routine bedtime a priority. Many are hectic, sleep-starved people themselves, and they forget that children are not miniature adults.
Parents can effectively foster healthy sleep patterns in their children if they focus on 2 clocks of critical importance to a child's health - the body clock and the alarm clock.
Never allow your child to have lax sleep schedules on the weekends. Shifting bedtime and wake time by even 3 hours over the course of a weekend - 2 days of staying up later and getting later than usual can reset the internal clock, making the child tired and crancy. |
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