The Importance of Sleep!

The Importance of Sleep!

In the summer with the sun setting later, many people tend to stay up later and enjoy the warm evenings. Kids most likely do not have early-morning commitments like they do during the school year, so they are able to accommodate this later bedtime by sleeping in late the next day. However, when summer fades and school looms closer, this poses a considerable dilemma with kids: how important is a full night of sleep really?

For kids ages 14-17 years old, the CDC recommends eight to ten hours of sleep per night. In fact, they write that 7 out of 10 high schoolers aren’t sleeping enough! If you are waking up at 6:30am to make the bus to school, that means getting to sleep by 10:30pm each evening! You may think staying up late to study for an exam or catching up with friends may be worthwhile, but studies show that it leads to increased sleepiness and decreased productivity the next day. Less sleep also reduces memory storage… canceling out any extra studying you may have done that night!

Getting a full night of sleep helps with memory consolidation, which means you’ll remember what you learned in class; it helps with muscle recovery after a tough workout; and sleep can even help fight infection when you are getting sick. When you don’t get enough sleep, your exhaustion may show up as anger, distraction, or just plain sleepiness.

If you struggle getting to sleep, one idea to try is using your bed only for sleep. Avoid using technology in bed, socializing on your bed, or even eating snacks while in bed so your body will pick up on the cue that bed = sleep.

When you have something super important coming you know you want – or need! – a good night’s sleep (think: the SAT, sports team tryouts, etc.), one trick is to focus on getting a good night’s sleep TWO nights before the event!! Say, the big game is on a Saturday. Focus on sleeping well and going to bed early on Thursday. That way, if anything flukey happens Friday night – like when the battery runs out in a fire alarm and beeps all night (true story!) – you can relax knowing you had “banked” a night of sleep. While “sleep-banking” is not a scientifically proven strategy, it can definitely calm the nerves to know that you had a great night of sleep recently.

When school rolls around, lots of people grumble about having to go to sleep earlier rather than staying up and doing more fun things. However, if you get the right quality of sleep for enough hours each evening, it will make the time you have during the day even better!

Cite: https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/features/students-sleep.htm

Pediatricians and sleep experts prefer closer to 10 hours a night for tweens and teens when possible!

https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/features/students-sleep.htm