SAM Daily Times

Sleep Tight

Children who do not get enough sleep have less control over emotions and are less focused at school.

As a whole, Americans do not get enough sleep. The National Sleep Foundation recommends 10 to 11 hours of shut-eye per night for children ages 5 to 12. A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this year found that about 41 million American workers get less than six hours of sleep per night. Now health experts worry that adults are passing their poor sleeping habits down to their children.

Reut Gruber is a psychologist and lead author of the new study. In the study, Gruber and other experts either added or subtracted one hour of sleep for healthy children ages 7 to 11. They observed the children over five nights. The goal was to see if small changes in the amount of sleep could affect a child’s behavior.

“Nobody became a genius, and nobody became crazy,” she said.  “But the findings show that in children small changes can make a big difference, and that is why this is meaningful.”

In earlier research, Gruber and her team looked at children who were at different stages on the attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder spectrum. In a study, parents were asked to put these kids to bed about an hour later than they normally would. The children completed attention tests both before and after the sleep change. After the study, two-thirds of kids who were on the border of having a disease were diagnosed as having the disease. It was triggered by lack of sleep.

“Between these two studies, to me this connection feels like a real finding,” says Gruber. Sleep, it seems, is just as important as diet and exercise in keeping children’s bodies and minds healthy.