Children - And Teens - Need More Sleep
Prevent Your Child From Catching Some Zzzz's in Class

Click here to view this story as it appeared in the Morganton News Herald

By ANNA WILSON - Blue Ridge HealthCare

SPECIAL TO THE NEWS HERALD

Summer's lazy days are almost over for the thousands of Burke County students heading back to school on Aug. 25.

No more staying up late and sleeping in.

Parents need to prepare their children now for the early to bed, early to rise routine of school.

"This is a significant issue," said Syed Malik, MD, a Blue Ridge HealthCare pulmonologist who specializes in sleep disorders. "Typically with adults, you'd see signs of sleepiness. With kids it's actually worse. As they feel sleepy, they tend to become more hyperactive, which in turn leads to behavior problems, more tantrums and more outbursts."

A study conducted by the National Sleep Foundation says most American children are not getting enough sleep.

Many experts also blame caffeine and TVs in the bedroom as part of the problem. One-quarter of all kids over 3 years of age drink at least one caffeinated beverage per day, which can cut average daily sleep time from 9.7 hours to 9.1 hours, the study said.

More than four in 10 school-aged kids also have TVs in their bedrooms, with a two-hour loss of sleep per week. Video games, DVD players, and even text-messaging telephones are part of the problem, too.

Since sleep is closely linked to learning and memory ability, the lack of a good night's sleep can impact the child's ability to absorb knowledge and learn, Dr. Malik said. "A lot of these kids have insufficient sleep or poor quality sleep because of sleep disorders and they tend to do poorly in school, falling behind in grades," he said.

Parents need to keep in mind that younger children who are still taking naps, need to be prepared to stay awake the whole day for kindergarten.

The average 5-year-old needs about 11 hours of sleep in a day, according to Keep-KidsHealthy.com. "So if your child was taking a 1- or 2-hour nap during the day and only sleeping 9 or 10 hours at night, you now have to shift the whole 11 hours to night-time," the web site says.

As for older kids, a 9-year-old needs about 10 hours of sleep. If your child is used to staying up late during the summer and typically sleeps from 11 p.m. to 9 a.m., then getting up at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. once school starts will be hard.

Parents can help make the transition from summer wakeup time to school wake-up time by enforcing an earlier bedtime.

High school age kids need about 9 (14-year-olds) to 8 (17-18 year olds) hours of sleep a day.

Although commonly seen as mainly as an adult problem, sleep apnea can affect children, too. Sleep apnea is caused by a blockage in the airway that disrupts normal breathing during sleep. "It's usually seen in kids who have large tonsils or adenoids," Dr. Malik said. "These kids tend to snore and they can even have pauses in their breathing at night. They also may be restless sleepers."

He said many of these children are misdiagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

"If your child has sleep apnea, you need to get it treated," Dr. Malik said. "Once the tonsils are enlarged, they usually don't shrink back."

One sleep aid for those who suffer from sleep apnea is the C-Pap machine, but Dr. Malik said it's difficult to adjust for children. "They may require a tonsillectomy."

"Parents wrongly assume that sleep requirements for kids are the same as for adults," Dr. Malik said. "They are not. Kids require much longer duration of sleep."

ANNA WILSON is the health writer at Blue Ridge HealthCare.

Fun Facts About Sleeping

• A snail can sleep for 3 years.
• 55 per cent of people yawn within 5 minutes of seeing someone else yawn. Reading about yawning makes most people yawn.
• Most of what we know about sleep we've learned in the past 25 years.
• While sleeping, one man in eight snores, and one in ten grinds his teeth.
• To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain's sleep-wake cycle are closely linked. That's why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep. The blood flow mechanism that transfers core body heat to the skin works best between 18 and 30 degrees C. But later in life, the comfort zone shrinks to between 23 and 25 degrees - one reason why older people have more sleep disorders.
• Dolphins sleep with one eye open. Ants don't sleep.
• The continuous brain recordings that led to the discovery of REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep were not done until 1953, partly because the scientists involved were concerned about wasting paper.
• The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
• The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.

Sleep problems affect more than one-third of elementary school-aged children, including problems breathing during sleep, waking up during the night, difficulty falling asleep, and daytime sleepiness.