Do your kids have a regular bedtime, like Sasha and Malia Obama? (The first kids, aged seven and ten, are in bed by eight p.m., according to reports.) Or do they just keep going and going, exhausted little energizer bunnies, till late into the night? Growing up in the freewheeling 70s, I remember being smug about my family's lack of set bedtimes -- and I remember falling asleep in school all the time. In fact, my bedtime-free childhood seemed less and less fun as I got older, leading to mornings of scrambling out of bed, late as usual, and arriving at high school (college, work) with wacky hair and bleary eyes.
Most research now indicates that kids -- even tweens and teens -- need far more sleep than they get, and that their sleep needs don't change much as they grow up. Most adults, too, are chronically sleep-deprived, getting far less than the eight recommended hours (the number for school-aged kids is ten hours, for young teenagers at least nine).
As one pediatric sleep expert said in a recent column in the New York Times by Dr. Perri Klass, the problem comes when people underestimate their own sleep needs, and those of their kids:
“It’s a bell-shaped curve,” she said, with just 2.5 percent of the population needing significantly less sleep than average. “The
problem,” she went on, “is that 95 percent of us think we’re in that
2.5 percent. You should assume until proven otherwise that your kid
needs that much sleep.”
It's these night owls who end up nodding off during circle time, first period math class, and, later, morning meetings. So how to fix the problem? Set bedtimes, such as in the Obama household, are a good idea, according to researchers. And we all know, or should, to keep the TV out of the bedroom (for kids especially, but it's good for parents as well). Beyond that, simply understanding and trying to account for a child's changing sleep needs and routines can be extremely helpful. Teenagers' sleep needs scarcely change, but their circadian rhythms undergo a shift that pushes them -- biologically, not just through their lifestyle demands of homework, facebook, etc. -- toward later and later bedtimes. Some researchers are now calling for later high school start times to allow these weary teens to at least get some decent sleep -- but it seems unlikely to happen, especially in an era when many are pushing for more and more schooling, period.
Having grown up in a household bereft of healthy sleep habits, I'm trying to instill a slightly more organized routine for my kids -- the toddler's asleep by eight, the teen by eleven (still not enough sleep, but better than she would do on her own). What do you do in your house to ensure that everyone gets enough rest?
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