Dr. Mom
Scheduling Sleep

By Lucie Amundsen

Hearing my husband read the “Princess Bride” to the kids from the next room is a sweet moment…until I realize that it’s well past nine on a school night. As Vizzini would say, “Inconceivable!”

It’s happened again. We’ve blown our 8:30 bedtime. It’s easy to do when the children get home from elementary school past four, play outside for a while, have family dinner, do homework or maybe some enriching (yet time-sucking) extracurricular activity. The next thing you know, it’s late. Very late. We barely have time to bathe anymore, much less floss.

Honestly, I think we did a better job of getting the first child plenty of sleep, but the second one has really gotten the short end of the REM. While child one was dutifully tucked into bed at eight every school night of kindergarten, it’s more difficult (if not impossible) to bed down the second one on time when the first doesn’t need quite as much sleep. (Yet another way wolves raise the second child…but that’s another column.)

Kids need a lot of sleep – more than I realized. Elementary students, on average, still need 10 -11 hours of rest a night and pre-schoolers need even more. I say “on average” because everyone has an individual circadian rhythm. Dr. Michael Hobbs of Pediatric Services in St. Louis Park says to determine how much sleep a child really needs you’d put them to bed at 7p.m. in a dark room without any stimulation. The time he or she falls asleep would be their natural bedtime. But, let’s face it; we’re probably not going to do that. “And that’s because we undervalue sleep in this culture,” says Dr. Hobbs. “We often act like it’s something that gets in the way of our lives instead of being a vital part of it.” (Aw, the truth hurts.)

Recently retired second-grade teacher Jan Harem (a gal with over 30-years experience under her belt) noticed a sleep problem in her classroom a few years ago. “I’d say half of my students were sleep deprived and I had a number who would fall asleep at their desks everyday.” Learning can be a difficult activity, but grasping new concepts when you’re tired is painful at best.

“Sleep also affects children socially,” she said. It’s hard to play, be a good friend and pick up on subtle social cues when you’re exhausted. Although that certainly rings true, I hadn’t really thought about it before. But, of course, I can cite examples of this in my own children, tired days when they can’t let go of a playground taunt that they would otherwise shrug off. Keeping their ability to cope with everyday life is worth a lot to me.

When talking to parents about the problems at school, Jan found many students were simply modeling the late night behavior of parents in the house. “When I’d ask my students what time they went to bed, I learned that many had no regular bedtime at all. They were essentially putting themselves to bed.” That’s when she realized she got more sleep than many of her 8-year-old students. “Once I’d learn what’s going on in a child’s house, I’d often think that the child was actually doing quite well.”

Another factor she found was that lots of her students had TVs, computers and telephones in their rooms – and while parents may be sending children to their beds, lots are not sleeping.

Dr. Hobbs says that screen time, be it television or computer, is too stimulating for brains trying to power down. “All the time, I’m telling parents that no child should have a television in their bedroom; it’s simply inappropriate. And when they tell me they try to get their children to turn it off and they won’t, I say ‘it has a plug doesn’t it?’”

This gets to the root of it. Parents, not children, need to be in charge of bedtime. “Parents need to be parents,” says Dr. Hobbs. “I see a lot of families that have no limits and parents absolutely need to be setting these.”

A good resource on problem solving bedtime issues is at mayoclinic.com. By dropping “sleep” into the Mayo search engine you can access a long article about child sleep with suggestions for various situations.

One of the better ones is the concept of powering down the whole house an hour before bedtime by turning off the TV and putting away electronic games. It’s also a good idea to keep that TV off or low while your child is trying to fall asleep to avoid feeling they’re “missing out” on fun. Also before committing to an outside activity, like a sport or play, think through the entire schedule with bedtime in mind. How many days in a row will this disrupt your routine? It may be worth the disruption, but keep sleep in mind as part of your decision process.

In our drive to fill our children’s lives with noble and lovely experiences, or perhaps to create a more relaxed household than the one we grew up in, we may be cheating our kids of a healthy sleep habit foundation.
As my mother-in-law says, “Every- thing’s harder when you’re tired” so one may re-frame bedtime as the gift of an easier day.

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