Could extra sleep have a positive effect on your child’s academic performance, school engagement, attitude, and physical and mental health? Research I was involved in suggests it’s a strong start.
After studying nearly 1,000 students attending 11 middle schools, our joint research team, Child Trends and Children’s National Health System, finds a school start time of 8 a.m. versus 7:20 a.m. resulted in students getting an average of 17 minutes of extra sleep each night. While these bedtimes shift an average of 15 minutes later, students with later school start times got additional sleep in the morning. The change in timing and duration of sleep was associated with decreased daytime tiredness, and students were 9 percent more likely to feel “wide awake” during class. This extra sleep, the equivalent of 51 hours, or roughly two days, throughout the school year, matters. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly half of today’s middle school students fall short on sleep.
As children enter adolescence, their bodies change. Brain hormones that help us fall asleep are released later at night. This makes falling asleep earlier harder for teens, at least in comparison to young children and adults. This biological drive to go to bed later and wake up later conflicts with early middle and high school start times.
[Read: Early School Start? How to Ensure Teens Get the Sleep They Need.]
The science behind these changes and our circadian rhythms, or internal body clocks, is well documented. Last year the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine was awarded to researchers studying how our body keeps track of time. The researchers discovered clocks in every cell and tissue in the body. The optimal regulation and coordination of these cellular clocks are dependent on the optimal timing and duration of sleep. These clocks, and sleep timing and duration, play an essential role in the core daily functions and health of our brains and bodies. This impacts immune function, body temperature, learning, mood and even metabolism (for example, hormones that regulate sugar and fat). The most current science looks at the diverse health effects of genetic clocks and sleep in humans.
In an ideal world, schools would start at 8:30 a.m. or later to sync with the latest science on circadian rhythms and what has long been known about the optimal timing and duration of teen sleep. But, there is often resistance to change in communities even when the benefits are well established, though some schools are beginning to shift to healthy start times.
Wherever things stand in your community or at your child’s school, what we can all do now is talk to children about how sleep affects our ability to function, like feeling focused, energized and alert, and offer tips to help kids wind down earlier in sync with their bodies’ biological preferences.
Here are five ways to get started:
1. Talk to your children. If you notice your teen is shortchanging sleep to fit in other activities, like studying, rehearsing lines for the school play or talking to friends, have a talk about healthy sleep patterns. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends teens get eight to 10 hours of sleep a night. Young teens and tweens should aim for 10 hours a night and older teens should get at least eight. Just like tying our shoes to prevent a fall or brushing our teeth to prevent cavities, getting enough sleep is an immediate health imperative and a long-term preventive health measure. Optimal sleep timing and duration recharges our brains, making us more efficient and creative thinkers and learners, and sharpens our reflexes, which can lead to preventing accidents and injuries.
[Read: Managing Your Teen’s Screen Time.]
2. Use motivational psychology. If your child wants to know why sleep is important, talk about how mental sharpness (attention and cognition) impacts their daily activities and goals, whether it’s getting an A in their pre-calculus class, tapping into their creative potential in English, or supporting optimal physical and mental performance during a basketball game, which could help him or her score the game-winning shot. Sleep isn’t a magic bullet for success, but the benefits of sleep are profound. This is one reason why the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lists sleep health and adolescent sleep health as a priorities in their 2020 goals for a healthier nation.
3. Keep your sleep period regular. Have a dark space, a comfortable bedroom, unplug from digital devices at least 30 to 60 minutes before bedtime, cut out naps longer than 15 minutes and eliminate all caffeine after noon. Perhaps most important is preventing social jet lag (a shift in sleep duration and timing on weekends compared to weekdays). Our research team recommends less than a two-hour shift in wake times on weekdays and weekends. Don’t use the snooze button and wake up as late as possible on weekday mornings. It is always easier to gradually move wake times earlier by 15 to 30 minutes a day than it is to shift bedtimes earlier. Like any guideline, setting an example and establishing a routine reinforces rules for teens — and puts them on autopilot.
4. Build habits and commit to a lifestyle change. The more you practice sound sleep patterns, the easier they become. Achieving improved sleep duration and quality for a full 10 days, and even better, two weeks, will provide proof that there are many short-term benefits and that it can be achieved. It’s OK if you and your family fall off the wagon and have a few days or a few weeks of late nights, especially during the summer and while on vacation. But make this a temporary occurrence; weekends should not be a free-for-all. Good sleep is as important as other health behaviors you practice at home –eating a nutrient-packed diet, exercising and managing stress, and finding joy in your activities — and these pillars of optimal health are complementary.
5. Take a sleep inventory. If you thrive on data, you can always experiment with a sleep log, such as what’s called a morningness-eveningness scale or other online circadian measures to determine your peak sleep-and-wake cycle. While the Epworth Sleepiness Scale and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale for Children and Adolescents are scientifically-robust questionnaires, the National Sleep Foundation has a free version you can access. You can take this personal inventory once a month or once a season and ask your children to do the same. What does it feel like to study for a biology test or attend soccer practice with five to six hours of sleep instead of eight to nine hours? Does your child feel tired, hungry, groggy and irritable if skipping sleep becomes commonplace? How does your child feel after a good night’s rest? By charting and recognizing these differences, formally or informally, teens can become intrinsically motivated to rearrange their schedules, or at least check out of late-night chat sessions with friends, especially if they know that extra hour of sleep helps them focus and feel fresh the next morning.
[See: 10 Concerns Parents Have About Their Kids’ Health.]
Remember, optimal sleep can have a significant effect on a child’s formative years, influencing academic performance, as well as physical and mental health outcomes, and improve family interactions.
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The Science of Sleep: Teen Circadian Rhythms Explained originally appeared on usnews.com
