School Days and Sleep

It is important that kids get enough rest.  At young ages, they are easily distracted, and frankly do not even consider sleep an option a lot of times, they just drift off when ever they are tired.  The problem is that when they are young, it is important to set habits that will follow them through their lives. 

If our kids do not get the proper amount of rest, they will be tired during the day.  This alone will cause them to lose valuable teaching time by not being in peak condition to learn.  But it goes farther, at night when we sleep, our brains process information from the previous day.  It stores the stimuli in either short or long term memory.  That process can get jumbled without the proper amount of time (sleep) to complete the process.  So what can we do?

How about first a consistent routine.  Our bodies, and theirs, are programed on a roughly 24 hour clock, broken into 12 hour segments.  If we are not consistent, then our bodies get confused and when we do sleep it is not the best quality.  This is also what causes jet lag.  A certain bed time and wake time is important (and it should be 7 days a week, 365 days a year).  Then our bodies will react and thrive. And the benefit to a consistent sleep schedule will carry forward in to adulthood, which can improve their abilities to work productively and make the most money for their skill set.



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When we are sleep deprived, our bodies make products related to stress, which among other things can cause us to gain weight, and be less productive than if the stress is controlled or eliminated.  In the case of kids,  we know that many are concerned about childhood obesity, while other things like overall activity would help improve that, a simple thing like a consistent bed time can help them be more active, because they got great rest.  In kids we have a great way to judge productivity, maybe better than adults do, its called grades.

So getting the proper amount and quality of sleep may help two of the biggest problems our kids face today, obesity, and grades (could all the ADHD be sleep related as well?  Is it not?).  Grades will affect their choice of college, or job opportunities as will their appearance.  So as my Mom always said "It's your bedtime, no discussion..."

Sleep Well!