Helping Your Kids...

Get the Sleep They Need

Has the bedtime ritual become a lost parental art? Recent research shows that kids are getting less sleep than they need, and it not only affects their school work, but may make them more vulnerable to drugs and alcohol in their teens.

In a three week study conducted by Brown Medical School and Bradley Hospital, teachers were asked to rate the performance of the 74 children, aged 6-12. One week the children followed their normal sleep patterns, the next week, they stayed up later, and the third week the children followed a 10 hour sleep routine. The children wore motion monitors to ensure they followed the directed sleep patterns.

The teachers were not told which week was which, but their reports clearly showed that staying up late and not getting enough sleep resulted in poor performance at school.

In another study conducted by the University of Michigan, even more worrying results emerged. This long term study followed 257 boys and their parents for 10 years, and found that subjects who had poor sleep habits as preschoolers were more likely to use drugs, tobacco and alcohol in their teens.“

Taken together with other studies in this area, our findings help make up a chain of evidence linking sleep disturbances to alcohol problems across a large segment of the life span,” said lead author and research assistant professor Maria Wong, Ph.D. Senior author and UMARC director Robert Zucker, Ph.D. said that the effect exists ``regardless of a number of other factors’’ relating to the risks of substance use and abuse.

While co-author Kirk Bower MD pointed out that this doesn’t necessarily mean poor sleep habits cause drug dependency later on, it does indicate that sleep disorders in children should be taken seriously and discussed with a doctor.

The National Sleep Foundation has guidelines for the sleep needs of four major age groups.

Preschoolers need 11-13 hours of sleep (which can include naps)

Elementary school children need 10-12 hours

Preteens need 9-11 hours

Teens need 8.5-9.5 hours

Herbs can help in establishing good sleep patterns but should be part of an holistic bedtime ritual.

Here are some pointers to help your children get the sleep they need:

Establish a set bedtime. Make sure that the child enjoys some quiet time at least an hour before bedtime, to wind down. No noisy music, action movies or electronic games. Try a board game instead.

Remove electronic gadgets from the bedroom. Many experts agree that the most pressing problem with children’s sleep patterns is the electronic `sleep robbers’ in their bedrooms, such as cellphones, computers and TVs. Put these things in their own part of the house. As part of your family safety rules, you should not be allowing children and young adults to surf the net or watch TV unsupervised anyway.

Herbal drinks can help calm the body and mind for sleep. I recommend chamomile or mint as being most suitable for preschoolers. If your children simply won’t drink herbal tea, warm milk with a spoonful of honey is just as effective. No caffeinated soft drinks such as cola, or sugary snacks (this is especially important with teenagers).

Infants and very young children should not be given herbal drinks, just their usual breast feeding or formula.

When a bath is part of the bedtime routine, add relaxing lavender oil or a lavender sachet to the bathwater. Place herbal sleep pillows inside the ordinary pillowcases on the bed, or add a toy stuffed with sleep herbs. If you make your own, make sure it is impossible for them to be opened. A good herbal pillow mix is dried lavender, dried peppermint leaves and rose petals.

Read a bedtime story or a chapter every night. I recommend the Narnia books and Harry Potter for older children, Hairy McClary and Baba the Elephant for younger children. But once you begin bedtime reading the children will soon have you reading their favorites over and again.

Once you leave the room, turn off the light and try to ignore repeated attempts to get you back in there. Certainly respond if it sounds like an emergency, but make it clear that bedtime means sleep, and you will not tolerate activity after bedtime. If the child gets up and starts playing, firmly but gently return him to bed and turn the lights out.

Setting a bedtime routine for children who are used to staying up late or falling sleep in front of the TV can be harder than establishing one right from the start. But the long term benefits will be worth it.

by Gail Kavanagh

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