Don't Let Kids Stay Up Too Late
Study: Extra Hour Makes Big Difference
POSTED: 12:44 p.m. EST March 4, 2003
When your child begs to stay up later than usual, it may seem easiest just to give in.
But even one hour of sleep loss can compromise children's alertness and brain functioning, a new study suggests.
"The daily struggles between children and their parents usually occur at home and are often limited to modest changes in sleep," said researcher Avi Sadeh, of the department of psychology at Tel Aviv University in Israel. "Persistent battles on topics such as 'just one more TV show' raise the scientific question: 'What difference does an hour make?'"
Sadah said previous studies have suggested that children today are getting less and less sleep over the years -- that is, less than children a decade or two decades ago.
"There are good reasons to believe that with today's nightly temptations (TV, Internet, and other aspects of social life and acting like grown-ups by staying up late), many children are chronically sleep-deprived," he said.
Sadeh and his team studied the effects of adding or subtracting one hour of sleep on 77 children in fourth and sixth grades. Each child wore an actigraph, a device on the wrist that detects movement. From this, researchers could determine the children's sleep schedule and sleep quality.
For the first two nights of the five-night study period, the children adhered to their normal sleep pattern, and for the last three nights the children were asked either to extend or reduce their sleep time by one hour.
Children who got an extra hour of sleep actually experienced more night-wakings and a decreased percentage of sleep. Reducing sleep by one hour had the opposite effect: It resulted in decreased night-wakings and an increased percentage of sleep, the researchers found.
Previous researchers have identified these effects as the body's way of adapting to sleep loss, but in this study, the sleep-deprived children reported significantly higher fatigue ratings in the evening. In addition, they did worse on several neurobehavioral tests compared to the children who received an extra hour of sleep, whose performance improved on many of the tests.
The study's results, published in the March/April issue of Child Development, suggest that "moderate changes in sleep duration have detectable significant effects on children's neuropsychological functioning," Sadeh said.
The researchers note that their study findings cannot, unfortunately, give a clear answer as to how much sleep children need at different ages.
"Parents and child-care professionals can explore the appropriate sleep needs of a specific child by experimenting with extending or restricting sleep, tracking the changes in the child's behavior and well-being, and finding the child's optimal sleep needs," Sadeh said.
"The daily struggles between children and their parents usually occur at home and are often limited to modest changes in sleep," said researcher Avi Sadeh, of the department of psychology at Tel Aviv University in Israel. "Persistent battles on topics such as 'just one more TV show' raise the scientific question: 'What difference does an hour make?'"
Sadah said previous studies have suggested that children today are getting less and less sleep over the years -- that is, less than children a decade or two decades ago.
"There are good reasons to believe that with today's nightly temptations (TV, Internet, and other aspects of social life and acting like grown-ups by staying up late), many children are chronically sleep-deprived," he said.
Sadeh and his team studied the effects of adding or subtracting one hour of sleep on 77 children in fourth and sixth grades. Each child wore an actigraph, a device on the wrist that detects movement. From this, researchers could determine the children's sleep schedule and sleep quality.
For the first two nights of the five-night study period, the children adhered to their normal sleep pattern, and for the last three nights the children were asked either to extend or reduce their sleep time by one hour.
Children who got an extra hour of sleep actually experienced more night-wakings and a decreased percentage of sleep. Reducing sleep by one hour had the opposite effect: It resulted in decreased night-wakings and an increased percentage of sleep, the researchers found.
Previous researchers have identified these effects as the body's way of adapting to sleep loss, but in this study, the sleep-deprived children reported significantly higher fatigue ratings in the evening. In addition, they did worse on several neurobehavioral tests compared to the children who received an extra hour of sleep, whose performance improved on many of the tests.
The study's results, published in the March/April issue of Child Development, suggest that "moderate changes in sleep duration have detectable significant effects on children's neuropsychological functioning," Sadeh said.
The researchers note that their study findings cannot, unfortunately, give a clear answer as to how much sleep children need at different ages.
"Parents and child-care professionals can explore the appropriate sleep needs of a specific child by experimenting with extending or restricting sleep, tracking the changes in the child's behavior and well-being, and finding the child's optimal sleep needs," Sadeh said.
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