Recently, I read an article on sleep. In this article, researchers studied the brains of adults who had not slept well for a week. The adults thought that they were doing fine, and they thought that their judgment was not impaired. However, when they took a test, they discovered that they were actually impaired to the point that their brains functioned as if they’d had a few too many drinks. They were not fit to drive or to function, but these adults thought that they were doing all right.
The same went for children. The researchers instructed intermediate-aged children to get more or less sleep at night. The children who got half an hour less sleep rated two grade levels below the children who got half an hour more sleep. As we tired parents know, sleep is essential for brain functioning and brain development. Sleep is when our children grow, and that includes their brains.
Now, I have a lot of guilt around sleep. My child has never been a good sleeper. She was a terrible sleeper as a baby and a toddler until she finished getting her teeth. Now she is a middle-of-the-road sleeper, but she seems to need less sleep than the average child, much to my dismay. When she was three, I got her to stop napping. She still loved her nap, but she would stay up until midnight every time she napped because she simply could not get to sleep. There were some very cranky times the next day.
Sleep is a personal sort of thing. Some of us are used to too little sleep. Some people need nine hours at a minimum, while others function perfectly well on seven hours. The same is true for preschoolers. There’s a continuum of sleep needs, and my child seems to fall on the short end of the stick. Preschoolers need about 10 to 12 hours of sleep per night. Of course, some of this may also occur in the day time in the form of a nap.
The true test is behavior, of course. Is your child grumpy and clingy or wired and hyper during the day? Sleep might be the reason. I know that on eleven hours, my daughter is lovely. On ten, she is grouchy. I relate.
Does your child get enough sleep? If not, what are your challenges getting your child to his or her quota of daily rest?