If you’re a parent of school-aged children, it’s likely you’ve run the back-to-school shopping gauntlet and have come away victorious, with all the requisite supplies and must-have clothes, shoes, and accouterments.
You might have even lined up some “little extras” that are sure to give your superstars every advantage, from a spiffy new MacBook to private tutoring.
When it comes to our kids, we all want to do everything we can to make sure the odds of success are in their favor, at school and in life. If this is true for you, don’t overlook the one extra that will up their odds and won’t cost you a fortune... a good sleep hygiene plan.
Why is this important?
It turns out, children and adolescents who don’t get the optimal amount of sleep are at a higher risk for developing conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and poor mental health, as well as problems with attention, behavior, and learning. According to a CDC survey, about a third of middle school students and more than three-quarters of high school students reported not getting enough sleep on school nights. That’s most students.
Matthew Walker, PhD, author of Why We Sleep and sleep scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, calls this decimation of sleep “one of the greatest public health challenges we face today,” adding that it’s having “a catastrophic impact on our health and wellness, and on the education of our children.”
Understanding this serious health challenge and how to help our children address it could be critical for their mental, physical, and emotional health and well-being, today and tomorrow.
Why We Need Sleep
Sleep, one of the foundational pillars of health for adults, serves several critical functions for children and adolescents as well.
To Rest the Body and Ready the Brain for Learning. Sleep is an essential function that allows kids’ bodies and minds to rest and recharge. More than that, it prepares their brains for learning. If kids don’t get enough sleep, their ability to learn drops by up to 40%, Dr. Walker said.
Even mild sleep deprivation — one to two hours a night — can impair their ability to learn. Specifically, it makes it harder for them to focus and think clearly the next day; leaves them feeling tired, sluggish, irritable, and prone to making mistakes; and causes poor impulse control, impaired memory, and mood swings.
Dr. Walker advised that students need sleep before and after learning — before in order to prepare the brain to soak up new information, and after to save those new memories so they don’t forget them. Without sleep, the memory circuits of the brain become waterlogged, so to speak, making it impossible for them to absorb new memories.
To Clean Out the Brain. Being awake, and taking in all the information we do during our busy day, creates toxins in the brain. During sleep, the brain gets to work cleaning out these toxins. Brain cells shrink during sleep; this shrinkage increases the space between the cells, which allows fluid to flow past and wash away the toxins.
What this means is that kids who try to undertake an important task — such as take a test or learn something new in class — after getting too little sleep the night before, will be doing it with a brain that has toxins floating around in it, which will greatly decrease their ability to pay attention, think clearly, learn, remember what they learned, and perform tasks safely.
To Make and Store Memories in the Brain. During sleep, kids’ brains run through everything they thought about and learned during the day, deciding which memories to erase and which to move into long-term storage. This process of storing short-term memories as long-term memories is called consolidation, and this process is critical for learning, memory, and how well kids function and perform tasks.
Stage 3 sleep, also known as deep non-rapid eye movement, or slow wave sleep, is especially important in improving memory retention and recall because it’s these slow waves that move memories from the hippocampus (a temporary storage site) to a more permanent storage site. Losing sleep means losing time for consolidation. So, not only can kids not learn new things, they also might not be able to remember what they learned just the day before.
The Sleep/Learning Connection
The link between sleep and learning has been heavily researched, especially the common trend among students of staying up all night studying before a test.
According to a Medical News Today report, about 20% of students pull all-nighters at least once a month, and about 35% stay up past three in the morning once a week or more. However, it’s one of the worst things students can do for their grades, claimed two MIT professors. In their study, they discovered that the less students slept during the semester, the worse their scores, and that the GPAs of students who got 9 or more hours of sleep a night were significantly higher (3.24) than those of students who got 6 or fewer hours of sleep a night (2.74).
Dr. Robert Stickgold, a sleep expert from Harvard Medical School, said that’s because inadequate sleep makes it more difficult for them to concentrate, which affects their ability to focus on and gather information presented to them in class as well as their ability to remember things they learned in the past.
If students want to see an improvement in their test scores, experts advise that their best bet is to prioritize their sleep during the entire learning process instead of staying up late to cram for a test.
For more tips, check out the Student Sleep Guide, or contact your SENS Solution Wellness Program coach.
How Much Is Enough
Sleep needs vary from person to person based on a number of factors including age, life stage, activity level, and health status. However, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that children (6-12 years) should sleep 9-12 hours a night and teenagers (13-18 years) should sleep 8-10 hours a night. Children younger than 6 need 12 or more hours a night, and adults should aim for 7-8 hours a night.
Need help deciding on a bedtime for your child? Refer to the Bedtime Calculator.
As you know, sleep can be affected by a number of lifestyle choices, including how we treat our bodies, what we put into our bodies, and how we interact with our environment. As a parent, you are the one who is best equipped to provide the sleep guidance that will influence your children’s academic success, both now and in the future. One way to do that is by creating — and modeling — good sleep habits at home.
Examples of good sleep habits include:
- Sticking to a consistent sleep schedule. Some research indicates that a steady sleep schedule — going to bed at the same time each night and getting up at the same time each morning, weekdays and weekends — is more important than total sleep time for learning.
- Limiting light exposure and technology use in the evenings, and limiting when and where your children use electronic devices.
- Restricting caffeine late in the day. It takes about 8 hours for caffeine to go through the system. Having a caffeinated drink with dinner will impede sleep.
- Keeping it cool. The body needs to drop its core temperature to initiate sleep and stay asleep, so aim for a bedroom temperature of around 65 degrees F.
Check out more tips at CDC’s Tips for Better Sleep, or the SENS Solution Wellness Program blog on Sleep.
Takeaway
You can up the odds of your children’s academic success by teaching them to make their sleep a priority. If you need help, talk with their physician or schedule time with your SENS Solution Wellness Program coach. They can provide the resources and guidance that could help you help your kids get the sleep that will enable them to perform at their best in school and in life. Who knows — you might even pick up a few tips for addressing any sleep issues that are holding you back from being your best self.
References
sleepfoundation.org; Why Do We Need Sleep?; https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/why-do-we-need-sleep
Explore Psychology; How Sleep Improves Learning and Memory; https://www.explorepsychology.com/sleep-improves-learning/
Coursera; The Importance of Sleep in Learning; https://www.coursera.org/lecture/learning-how-to-learn/1-8-the-importance-of-sleep-in-learning-AsWfx?utm_medium=sem&utm_source=bg&utm_campaign=B2C_NAMER__coursera_FTCOF__branded-search-country-US-country-CA&campaignid=278172071&adgroupid=1209463253056290&device=c&keyword=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.coursera.org%2F&matchtype=b&network=o&devicemodel=&adposition=&creativeid=&hide_mobile_promo&msclkid=b028f3b0d6941a4410b0952153b27ec5&utm_term=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.coursera.org%2F&utm_content=01%20-%20Branded%20Search%20-%20US%20-%20dynamic%20ad%20group
msn.com; How the brain chooses which memories are important enough to save and which to let fade away; https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/how-the-brain-chooses-which-memories-are-important-enough-to-save-and-which-to-let-fade-away/ar-BB1kLcCY?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=fdcbdb04a1194f47b2939b819f73938b&ei=9
sleepresearchscority.org; Why Sleep Is Important for Optimizing Learning and Memory; https://www.sleepresearchsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/
Why_Sleep_Is_Important_For_Optimizing_Learning_And_Memory.pdf
upenn.edu; The Impact of Sleep on Learning and Memory; https://www.med.upenn.edu/csi/the-impact-of-sleep-on-learning-and-memory.html
Medical News Today; Significant Sleep Deprivation and Stress Among College Students, USA; https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/160265#1
mit.edu; A Correlation Between Sleep and Test Scores; https://news.mit.edu/2019/better-sleep-better-grades-1001
Sleep Medicine, Sleep and Memory; https://sleep.hms.harvard.edu/education-training/public-education/sleep-and-health-education-program/sleep-health-education-88
Matthew Walker, PhD, TED Talk; Sleep Is Your Superpower; https://www.ted.com/talks/matt_walker_sleep_is_your_superpower/transcript?subtitle=en&trigger=0s
NIH News in Health; Sleep On It; https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2013/04/sleep-it
CDC; Sleep in Middle and High School Students; https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/features/students-sleep.htm
unc.edu Learning Center; Sleeping to Succeed; https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/sleeping-to-succeed/