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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Are Our Kids Getting Enough Sleep?

Think your kids are getting enough sleep? I know I did. Think again.

NY Magazine writes about some groundbreaking studies being done that tie our children's performance in just about every arena to the amount of sleep they are getting at night. And the results are pretty eye-opening.

One study, done by a doctor at Tel Aviv University, showed just how detrimental missing that hour of sleep actually can actually be to our kids' cognitive abilities:
The effect was indeed measurable—and sizable. The performance gap caused by an hour’s difference in sleep was bigger than the normal gap between a fourth-grader and a sixth-grader. Which is another way of saying that a slightly sleepy sixth-grader will perform in class like a mere fourth-grader. “A loss of one hour of sleep is equivalent to [the loss of] two years of cognitive maturation and development,” Sadeh explains.

Sadeh’s findings are consistent with other researchers’ work, all of which points to the large academic consequences of small sleep differences. Dr. Monique LeBourgeois of Brown University studies how sleep affects pre-kindergartners. Virtually all young children are allowed to stay up late on Fridays and Saturdays. Yet she’s discovered that the sleep-shift factor alone is correlated with performance on a standardized school-readiness test. Every hour of weekend shift costs students seven points on the test. Dr. Paul Suratt of the University of Virginia studied the impact of sleep problems on vocabulary-test scores of elementary-school students. He also found a seven-point reduction in scores. Seven points, Suratt notes, is significant: “Sleep disorders can impair children’s I.Q.’s as much as lead exposure.”

Every study done shows a similar connection between sleep and school grades—from a study of second- and third-graders in Chappaqua to a study of eighth-graders in Chicago. The correlations really spike in high school, because that’s when there’s a steep drop-off in kids’ sleep. Dr. Kyla Wahlstrom of the University of Minnesota surveyed more than 7,000 high schoolers in Minnesota about their sleep habits and grades. Teens who received A’s averaged about fifteen more minutes sleep than the B students, who in turn averaged eleven more minutes than the C’s, and the C’s had ten more minutes than the D’s. Wahlstrom’s data was an almost perfect replication of results from an earlier study of more than 3,000 Rhode Island high schoolers by Brown’s Mary Carskadon. Certainly, these are averages, but the consistency of the two studies stands out. Every fifteen minutes counts.
Equally persuasive is this report from some school districts who chose to give their kids an extra hour of sleep based on the emerging data that points to importance of a good night's sleep:
Convinced by the mountain of studies, a handful of school districts around the nation are starting school later in the morning. The best known of these is in Edina, Minnesota, an affluent suburb of Minneapolis, where the high school start time was changed from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30. The results were startling. In the year preceding the time change, math and verbal SAT scores for the top 10 percent of Edina’s students averaged 1288. A year later, the top 10 percent averaged 1500, an increase that couldn’t be attributed to any other variable. “Truly flabbergasting,” said Brian O’Reilly, the College Board’s executive director for SAT Program Relations, on hearing the results.

Another trailblazing school district is Lexington, Kentucky’s, which also moved its start time an hour later. After the time change, teenage car accidents in Lexington were down 16 percent. The rest of the state showed a 9 percent rise.
Studies also show that another side effect of too little sleep would seem to be a slowed metabolism:
Five years ago, already aware of an association between sleep apnea and diabetes, Dr. Eve Van Cauter at the University of Chicago discovered a “neuroendocrine cascade” that links sleep to obesity.

Sleep loss increases the hormone ghrelin, which signals hunger, and decreases its metabolic opposite, leptin, which suppresses appetite. Sleep loss also elevates the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol is lipogenic, meaning it stimulates your body to make fat. Human growth hormone is also disrupted. Normally secreted as a big pulse at the beginning of sleep, growth hormone is essential for the breakdown of fat.

It’s drilled into us that we need to be more active to lose weight. So it spins the mind to hear that a key to staying thin is to spend more time doing the most sedentary inactivity humanly possible. Yet this is exactly what some scientists seem to be finding. In light of Van Cauter’s discoveries, sleep scientists have performed a flurry of analyses on children. All the studies point in the same direction: On average, children who sleep less are fatter than children who sleep more. This isn’t just in the U.S.; scholars around the world are considering it, as they watch sleep data fall and obesity rates rise in their own countries.

Three foreign studies showed strikingly similar results. One analyzed Japanese elementary students, one Canadian kindergarten boys, and one young boys in Australia. They all showed that kids who get less than eight hours of sleep have about a 300 percent higher rate of obesity than those who get a full ten hours of sleep. Within that two-hour window, it was a “dose-response” relationship, according to the Japanese scholars.

In Houston public schools, according to a University of Texas at Houston study, adolescents’ odds of obesity went up 80 percent for each hour of lost sleep.
Sooo. That extra cup of water, the extra few minutes watching the game, the late hour at which they actually settle down and get their homework done, the early rising to catch minyan at school (for those boys who are Bar Mitzvah) - all could potentially be setting our kids' cognitive functioning and physical health back in a very real, very measurable way. The reason that is such a bitter pill for me - and likely many fellow parents of of school-age or older children - to swallow, is the simple fact that it just does not seem possible for my kids to manage all that needs to be done on a school night, plus a bit of downtime before the deadline rears its ugly head for what this study seems to consider a reasonable bedtime. Consider the long school hours Yeshiva kids put in (pretty much dawn to dusk this time of year), add numerous subjects' worth of homework (at least an hour's worth nightly for some kids), throw some extra-curricular activities into the mix (I am not taking away their only shot at getting some decent exercise when winter comes around), and as it is you have a day with far too few hours in it. Add an earlier bedtime to the mix? I would venture to guess that for many households, it almost feels like it just can't be done.

Obviously, with studies as compelling as these, I'm not giving up just yet - but how in the world does one get teenagers to settle in at a reasonable hour? Or force a wired school-age child to actually fall asleep at bedtime - and not just lay in bed? Cut back on studying for tests so that kids can go to sleep earlier and potentially reap those cognitive gains?? Uh, but what if there simply isn't enough time to actually review all the material? Which is more important to better test performance - more hitting the pillow, or more hitting the books? And is anyone really willing to bet that it's indisputably healthier for our kids' - many of whose physiques are, let's face it, sorely in need of some physical activity - to cut back on any extracurricular sports that might push back their bedtime for fear of them...getting fat??

As I said, these studies all seem very persuasive, and I will admit that I already announced to the Ortho offspring that from here on in, everyone must be in bed at his or her appointed bedtime (can't blame a mom for trying). But who's to say that said bedtimes will even be early enough? And how many hours exactly make up the elusive gold standard that constitutes "enough sleep"? I don't see any guidelines in the article as to how much sleep is enough - only some hints as to how little is too little. Anyone?

39 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Check out http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/general/sleep/sleep.html

They discuss required/suggested hours of sleep at every stage/age of a child's life.

9:17 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Still buying any products with caffeine in them? Drinking a glass of a cola soda, even if diet, if it is not decaffeinated can affect a child for up to 10 hours after being drunk. Add in eating too soon before bedtime, and exercising or any type of physical activity too close before bedtime and you have a recipe for not falling asleep even if you get into bed.

9:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is one of the reasons why we moved closer to our childrens' schools - so that they wouldn't ride the bus one hour each way. That was one of the worst scenarios I've ever encountered.

All of my children were in bed at 8 PM - no matter what day of the week it was. We never kept them out late because they looked forward to their rest - and so did we.

In fact, my children took naps every dat at 1 PM until they reached kindergarten. They took naps at pre-k at 1 PM as well.

I cannot overemphasize how important sleep is - and should be respected at all times.

Children need 12 hours of sleep. It lessens when they become 11 or 12 and then increases when they go through growing spurts (remember, they grow when they sleep!). Then it will lessen again.

On Shabbos, we would rather have other children sleep in with us rather than our children going out - this way we know when they are going to bed and don't become overtired for the next day.

Our lifestyle may not be practical for some, as as adults, our older children still stick to a routine that closely mimicks their childhood sleeping patterns - which is great.

10:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If only such amounts of sleep were actually feasible for teenagers today. Not everyone lives close to school or has few enough responsibilities that the ideal amount of sleep can usually, let alone always, be attained.

In high school I was very concerned about getting enough sleep when I had to drive to school (at least a half hour each way in fairly serious traffic, with other teenage passengers), much more so than for an average school day (though that was a concern in that situation as well).

Dual curriculums make reasonable schedules infinitely more challenging to devise. The fact that people will often times view a school as not being serious or demanding enough if the school day seems short in any way only compounds the issue.

Oh, I wish I could get a reasonable amount of sleep...

12:56 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, the overly long day in most yeshivas contributes to the lack of sleep the kids get. They are not only in school all day, and sometimes into the night hours, but then they come home to loads of homework--one hour a night would be good. It's sometimes a lot more.

But it's not just school. It's all the extra activities too. They are involved in sports and chesed work and this also takes time away from sleeping.

And then there is the "electronic" reason they don't sleep enough. Cell phones or regular phones in their bedrooms. Televisions in their bedrooms. CD players in their bedrooms. Game playing systems in their bedrooms. Computers and the Internet in their bedrooms. Their bedrooms aren't for sleeping any more. It's more fun to be sent to their rooms then to stay in the kitchen under their parents eyes. Maybe if bedrooms only contained a bed and nothing else the kids might actually sleep when they get to their rooms.

9:16 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great topic, OM. My oldest son is in high school in a local yeshiva. He gets on the bus before 7 AM, and gets home 3 nights a week at close to 10 PM. He is also in Yeshiva 6 days a week, struggling to get a regents diploma and excel in his gemara. There is no way he is getting even close to enough sleep. But I don't see what my options are. What can we do? I don't see the Yeshivas agreeing to start Minyan later or cut back on Mishmar. Maybe at PTA night I can tell them that "Orthomom said you need to cut back your hours" That should work. ;)

9:23 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The worst part about the lengthy Yeshiva day is that the afternoon secular study time is all too often a wasteland resulting in the infamous phone calls to secular teachers that run, "You may not remember me but I was in your class at Yeshiva_____ and I am getting married tomorrow and need your mechila for what I did in your class."

Many of us have been the recipients of these calls for numerous years from students we taught at various yeshivas.

9:55 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anyone else remember back when mishmar was only one night a week on Thursdays? Kids got home for a regular dinner on the other nights and still had time to breath before they had to go to sleep. Now it's three nights a week and one menahel locally has been heard to say that 4 nights would be better. Next thing you know they are going to take the kids straight from the delivery room to yeshiva and parents will get occasional visitation rights, like right before a wedding so they can sign the necessary checks to pay for it.

10:13 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

2 things have made a huge difference in getting my kids (age 5 and 4) to go to bed at a normal hour:
1) I never make a battle out of bedtime. I consistently go through the same bedtime routine with them every night, the same routine that I've been doing since they were babies (giving them enough time for an extra glass of water, and request for another book, etc.) Then I encourage them to listen to their bodies when its telling them that its tired. But I never yell, scream, fight or even coax. I just calmly say "it's bedtime now, your body is tired and it needs to get some sleep." If they start to insist that they want to stay up longer, I just repeat the line about bedtime.
2) After I put them to bed, I go to bed myself. When they see that the house is settling down for the night, and there's nothing exciting going on, they are more accepting of bedtime. Kids don't like to feel like they're missing out on activities by going to sleep.

Some other ideas--I love to read them the book "Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late" as a bedtime story. Also, I put on CDs of soothing music or stories so that they can wind down.

I don't have a solution for the long days of school in Yeshiva (including extracurricular activities), and the hours of homework, because my kids are not up to that stage yet. I'm hoping someone else can provide some ideas for how to encourage older kids to get more sleep.

11:33 AM  
Blogger Ezzie said...

Maybe those yeshiva and school days are too long, coupled with longer days all around. I truly wonder if this is different in and out of cities such as New York; I recall being home and playing football or baseball or going on the computer at a pretty decent hour. My homework didn't take all that long, and while I stayed up late, it wasn't because I had to, I simply didn't fall asleep easily. My house was pretty calm/boring by 6pm, everyone was home and eating supper... etc.

12:34 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

B"H

No surprise to me that the obesity crisis in schools started about the same time as the schools started going crazy assigning homework.

Can't they just get their work done in school? What is this fascination with hours of homework. We didn't have that, and we are fine!

1:29 PM  
Blogger Commenter Abbi said...

I definitely believe this is true, which is why I also do the consistent bedtime with my four and two year olds (7 pm for the 4 yr old, 7:30 for the two year old, who still naps for 2 hours a day)

OTOH, I managed to get through Ramaz, commuting 3 hours a day, with an A-B average while suffering from severe insomnia. Go figure.

3:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My high school yeshiva student (10th grade) read the article and his reaction was to xerox it and hand it to his principal. Let's see what happens.

3:47 PM  
Blogger Charlie Hall said...

I've been saying for years that later starts were an easy way to improve test scores. It works for adults, too -- I davened at an 8:30am minyan this morning.

11:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And what does lack of sleep do to parents. No one talks about that.

2:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The answer is: No. Kids don't get enough sleep. End of story, no one gives a shit. The parents should make their kids go to sleep at a decent time if they are tired.

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