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ZZZZZ alert: do your kids get enough sleep?

Sleep experts say too many kids are short on shut-eye. What should parents do?

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Originally published in Today's Parent April 2005

Is 9½ hours of sleep enough for a four-year-old — one who has to get up at seven each morning for school, and sometimes wakes as early as six? That’s what Natalya gets on her better nights, says Tracy Charpentier of Oshawa, Ont. “Last night she went to bed at about 8:15, but she wasn’t asleep until 9:30. She’s often awake later than that. I remember one night when she didn’t fall asleep until around midnight.”

Natalya has always been a reluctant sleeper. She stopped napping at 14 months, slept through the night for the first time at 18 months and still wakes up some nights. “She’s always fought sleep,” says Charpentier. She and her husband, Louis, have employed many of the standard tricks used by parents of problem sleepers — driving around in the car, walking the floor, singing songs, lying down with Natalya until she falls sleep, not staying with her, altering her diet and making sure she gets lots of exercise. “We noticed that when she was tired she would get restless,” says Louis Charpentier. “So we tried to turn that restlessness into exercise, hoping she’d feel more physically tired.”

Nothing has made much of a difference, although things go a little better when Dad does bedtime. “She’s quieter and will stay in her room for him,” Charpentier says. But still Natalya is getting by on no more than 9½ hours. That’s less sleep than averages reported by parents for her age group in two different studies, and well below what experts recommend. Charpentier thinks the lack of sleep may be affecting her daughter’s behaviour. “She has a meltdown just about every day. With the amount of sleep she gets on some nights, I don’t know how she manages to function.”

Many experts believe that too many of today’s children are going short of sleep. Last year, the National Sleep Foundation (NSF), a US-based network of sleep professionals, released a survey suggesting that one-third of toddlers and preschoolers and about one in four school-aged children weren’t getting enough sleep. In a UK study with similar findings, English psychiatrist Luci Wiggs hinted darkly that “the long-term consequences in terms of physical and mental health for both the child and their family can only be guessed at.”

Are today’s kids really so sleep deprived? And if so, what should parents do?

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