America is an overworked and under-slept nation, and parents are
among the most sleep-deprived segment of the population. We Americans
spend more hours working than residents of any industrialized nation. In
order to keep up with the demands of work, of keeping the house going,
spending time with the kids and taking a moment for ourselves, we steal
time from sleep.
It starts with childbirth. Raising infants is exhausting. On
average, a parent of a new baby loses 400 to 750 hours of sleep during
the first year! But the need for parental intervention doesn't disappear
the first year. A third of children age one to four require some form of
nighttime ministration.
Chronically sleep-deprived, parents are at risk of thinking that
tiredness is a normal condition of life. But it's not. Even small
decrements from the eight-hour standard for adults can impair performance
in the following days. Memory, learning, coordination, concentration,
mood, ability to tolerate stress—all are affected by sleep loss.
But as bad as sleep deprivation is for adults, it's an unfair burden to
foist on kids, whose growth and learning—and thus capacity for
future performance—hinges on adequate sleep.
Unfortunately, says Cornell University psychologist James B. Maas,
Ph.D., young parents know nothing about the rules for good sleep. As a
result, many kids today are struggling just to keep their eyes open.
They're not just falling asleep on the school bus, they're having trouble
keeping on task inside the classroom. When they're not in a stupor
they're acting up and acting out—and often mistakenly diagnosed as
having attention deficit disorder and given stimulants.
Dr. Maas wants to set the record straight and let parents know that
kids today need much more sleep than they are currently getting.
¶ High school and college kids average 6.1 hours of sleep a
night when they need 9.25 hours to be fully alert all day long the next
day.
¶ Kids are swilling stimulants like coffee and colas—and
sometimes amphetamines—to keep themselves awake.
¶ Behavioral problems among kids in middle school and high
school significantly disappear when kids get more sleep.
¶ Lack of sleep magnifies the effect of alcohol, with alarming
results. One drink on five and a half hours sleep, reports Dr. Maas, has
the same effect as six drinks on eight hours of sleep. “You have a
young population learning to drive and experimenting with alcohol, a
deadly combo. The greatest killer of teenagers is car accidents largely
exacerbated by sleepiness.”
¶ Sleep is critical to academic performance. It is also
essential for performance on the athletic field, and for mood.
¶ The sleep deprivation of today's students is exacerbated by
so-called yo-yo scheduling—going to bed late during the week, but
going to bed even later on the weekends. Delaying sleep on weekends
delays the nightly secretion of melatonin, the sleep hormone. As a
result, kids are “walking zombies” in the school corridors on
Mondays. “Their bodies are in the classroom but their brains are
jet-lagged, somewhere in London, and they never left home.” The
delay in hormone secretion also keeps them from going to bed on time the
next day, even though they are vastly sleep-deprived.
¶ Motor skills are improved about 20% with sleep of adequate
duration. Between the sixth and the eighth hour of sleep, the brain acts
on calcium molecules, preserving motor skills newly acquired through
practice.
¶ When the schools in a community adopt later start times,
allowing kids to get more sleep, behavioral problems plummet and
performance in the classroom and on the playing field improves.
You watch what your kids eat. Make sure they get enough
sleep.
Tags:
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cornell university,
good sleep,
hinges,
james b maas,
new baby,
nighttime,
school bus,
sleep loss,
spending time,
stimulants,
stupor,
tiredness,
unfair burden,
university psychologist,
young parents
