NOT WORRIED ENOUGH? THEN LET'S TALK SLEEP

Posted by: Cathy Arnst on October 15

Last week’s New York magazine ran a story that has to be pretty disturbing for just about any parent out there, titled Snooze or Lose. The subhead says it all: Overstimulated, overscheduled kids are getting at least an hour’s less sleep than they need, a deficiency that, new research reveals, has the power to set their cognitive abilities back years. Author Po Bronson surveyed the latest research on sleep and discovered that children today, from elementary through high school, get about an hour less sleep each night than they did 30 years ago. And that one lost hour could be the cause of lower test scores, high rates of ADHD, behavioral problems, even the obesity crisis. Here’s the key passage:

Using newly developed technological and statistical tools, sleep scientists have recently been able to isolate and measure the impact of this single lost hour. Because children’s brains are a work-in-progress until the age of 21, and because much of that work is done while a child is asleep, this lost hour appears to have an exponential impact on children that it simply doesn’t have on adults.

The surprise is how much sleep affects academic performance and emotional stability, as well as phenomena that we assumed to be entirely unrelated, such as the international obesity epidemic and the rise of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. A few scientists theorize that sleep problems during formative years can cause permanent changes in a child’s brain structure: damage that one can’t sleep off like a hangover. It’s even possible that many of the hallmark characteristics of being a tweener and teen—moodiness, depression, and even binge eating—are actually symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation.

Arrrghhhh. Between after-school activities, homework, and our desire to spend some quality time with our kids in the evening, how do you make sure they get that brain-building eight hours? I try to stick to an 8:30 pm bedtime for my 9-year-old. That means she is not allowed to watch TV during the week, her computer time is limited, and her sitter feeds her dinner at 6, before I get home, so that I can go over her homework and we can read together before she goes to bed. If I had more than one child, or got home later myself, I don’t how I’d manage. And I do let her stay up until 11 pm on weekends—which, according to the article, is also damaging.

The Wall St Journal’s blog The Juggle recently ran a post on this same article, and got over 100 comments, at least half of which angrily blamed it all on working parents. I don’t think so. I know plenty of kids with stay-at-home parents who stay up late on school nights. And my good friend Bette, a working parent, was always absolutely rigid about an 8 pm bedtime for her two boys until they were in high school—even on weekends. They both ended up at Brown University, so she may have proved the scientists right.

At any rate, I’d be curious to hear from the parents out there who make sure their kids get enough sleep. Please, share your secrets!

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