Sleep!!!

Did you know that kids who get LESS than 8 hours of sleep per night often experience 

• Lower grades and SAT scores ('A' students get 15 min more sleep than 'B' students who get 15 min more sleep than 'C' students)  
• Less successful Executive Functioning (ability to organize tasks and strategically plan activities)    
• Inattentiveness in class    
• Perseveration on the wrong answer     
• Increased moodiness and depressed mood (it's more than teen moodiness)      
• Memory impairment  (the more teens learn during the day the more sleep they need to store that learned information)
• Childhood weight gain

     -Nurture Shock (2009) by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

There's more -- teens who are sleep deprived have more accidents and are responsible for more than half of the 100,000 "fall asleep" crashes per year. 

And even more is the research that USA Today and the Boston Globe report that lack of sleep, and late bedtimes for teens increase the risk of contemplating suicide.

Most parents of teenagers know that there is a "phase shift" for teens.  Sometime around puberty their body clocks shift so that they get sleepy later in the evening, and sleep longer in the morning.  

Parents and teachers need to reinforce the importance of getting "a good night's sleep" consistently.  Often teenagers are allowed to establish their own bedtimes.  This is not a good idea.  Just like when they were young, households need to hold on to quiet times to help teens prepare for bed, and wind down their bodies so that they can prepare to fall asleep.  Turn lights down, reduce the exposure to TV and games with high emotional content.   Turn off electronics including telephones and texting.  

Talk about sleep.  Reinforce the importance of sleep and take it seriously when kids struggle with getting enough of it.  Watch for more information about helping teens get the sleep they need.