Are Kids Getting enough Sleep? By Jay Conley
Does your child go to bed with a cell phone—and wake up at all hours to text or read new messages? If so, you’re not alone. Sleep researchers say that many children are scrimping on sleep due to this and other distractions. And that it can affect their grades and health. School-age children have more distractions than ever preventing them from getting needed shut-eye, according to the National Sleep Foundation. Aside from homework, sports, and other extracurricular activities, they can have trouble turning off the TV, smartphone, and Internet. Combine that with early classes, and the window of time available for sleep seems to keep shrinking. Drowsiness or fatigue are also leading causes in at least 100,000 traffic accidents annually, and drivers age 25 or younger are involved in the majority of accidents where drivers fall asleep, says the National Sleep Foundation. “Even if you get into bed at 10 o’clock and you have to be up at 6, you’re only getting 8 hours of sleep in the best of worlds if you slept the whole time,” says Helene A. Emsellem, M.D., a neurologist and medical director of e Center for Sleep & Wake Disorders in Chevy Chase, Md. “We feel the adolescent population is sleep deprived in general.” A recent study from UCLA, published last August in the journal Child Development, indicates that when teens stay up late to study, the extra time studying not only doesn’t compensate for the lack of sleep, it has a negative effect on their grades. “I think the real implication here is don’t sacrifice one for the other,” says Andrew Fuligni, a UCLA professor of developmental psychology who worked on the study. “If you have extra academic demands, you need to fulfill them, but don’t sacrifice sleep to fulfill them.” Another new study, however, indicates that kids may be getting enough rest. is study, conducted at UCLA and published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine last November, collected data on 1,500 to 2,800 children from 1997 to 2007. It indicated that they got the recommended amount of age-appropriate sleep. Researchers based their findings on parents’ reports of their children’s sleep habits. How much sleep do children need? It depends on their age. e U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that kids ages 5 to 10 get 10 to 11 hours of sleep, and adolescents ages 10 to 17 get 8 1⁄2 to 9 1⁄4 hours. One thing we do know: Getting enough sleep is critical to learning, says Dr. Emsellem.
CarilionClinic.org | SPRING 2013 5