Article Review Day 12: Summary of the Study

You may think, "Hmm, my kids don't get that much sleep but I don't think they are tired. They don't yawn much, or fall asleep in the car or at school. And they have so much energy at night! How could they be tired?"

Well, according to the Sleep in Infants article by Davis, Parker, and Montgomery and my observations, "children often manifest symptoms that are paradoxical to sleepiness such as irritability, hyperactivity, short attention span, and low tolerance for frustration." Now, you may be thinking, "That sounds like my child." Let's remember that 1 in 4 children has some sort of sleep problem. "These indicators are often overlooked because children may have a long history of these symptoms or they may be mild in nature."

As parents, educators, people in contact with parents and children, we need to advocate for the importance and necessity of sleep. "Considerable clinical and anecdotal evidence supports an association between sleep loss and resultant cognitive and behavioral changes. Children's emotional and behavioral problems often significantly improve when underlying sleep problems are identified and rectified resulting in the attainment of adequate amounts of sleep. Furthermore, several studies have found a link between typical symptoms of inadequate sleep in children and symptoms characteristic of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)."

So, think again before thinking "Sleep, Shmeep". This is serious stuff- just increasing the amount of sleep our children receive could change our child's behavior, performance at school, emotional well-being, decrease kids accidents and injuries, and even answer some of the unanswerable questions regarding ADHD.