Five Pounds of Sleep, please!

Today, children get on average 1 hour of sleep less each night than they did 30 years ago. Kindergartners get 30 minutes less.

What are the consequences?

They are actually astonishing. The book Nurture Shock describes a number of interesting experiments around the impact of sleep deprivation on a child’s brain development:

For 6th graders, a sleep difference of only 60 minutes was the equivalent to 2 years of cognitive development.

This is staggering. 2 years of cognitive development at this age is a very significant difference.  This means, if I am disciplined about what the right time is to go to bed, my daughters will easily “earn” this hour back in their days just by being more productive. It is defeating the purpose to have them stay up late to practice, whatever it is, even though it is important to get in enough hours. I would rather cut back on the number of activities they can do.

Sleep shift on weekends by 1 hour costs the child 7 IQ points.

Ah, these late night shows, the parties, all the things that are cool and that just have to happen late at night. I love them too, how can I disallow them? Well, for one thing my brain is adult and the changes in sleep patterns do not matter quite as much any more.  Second, luckily, it does not matter as much any more if I am smart. More seriously, I am handling this issue with the following rule: no late nights on weekends before tests, and no sleeping in. This last rule may be surprising, but I found that it really helps with sleep hygiene.

In high school, every 15 minutes more sleep make the difference between As, Bs, and Cs

Not surprising after the two previous findings, but another good argument for enough sleep.

Lack of sleep makes fat.

Lack of sleep elevates the stress hormone cortisol, which is lipogenic (which means it increases body fat). In international studies, 8 hour sleepers were 300% more likely to be obese than 10 hour sleepers. Actually, sleep may be as important a factor for obesity as diet. Now I finally have an argument that carries some weight with my daughters.