The Top 4 Benefits of Sleep for Your Children
New parents often worry about how much their infants sleep. With newborn babies sleeping upwards of 16 to 17 hours per day, it can seem like they´re hardly ever awake. As your child grows into the stage of a toddler, however, they will transition between seemingly endless periods of energy to complete exhaustion. With nap times included, toddlers usually sleep around 10 to 14 hours a day.
By the time your child begins to go to school, however, it might feel like they never want to go to sleep. While school age children should be sleeping 9 to 11 hours each day, your child most likely rarely gets that much sleep. Between school, homework, extracurricular activities, and the endless desire to be outside and play with friends, getting to sleep is not exactly on the top of the list of priorities for most children.
However, getting enough sleep is obviously important for all of us. Children especially need to get a certain amount of quality rest. Below, we look at the top four benefits of sleep for children.
Reason #1: Sleep Promotes Growth
New parents often remark that their child seems to grow overnight. While you might not be able to actually see your newborn child growing in his or her crib, sleep is certainly important for growth. The most important growth hormones are increase their secretion rates during rest. However, these hormones depend on deep sleep to work properly. To help your child grow well, it is important to create an environment that promotes profound sleeping patterns. Great mattresses, such as those offered by Rest Right Mattress, can help to promote deep sleeping so that your child can grow properly.
Reason #2: Sleeping Promotes Heart Health
While many people think that heart health issues are only related to diet, exercise, and lifestyle, new research is showing that getting enough sleep each night is essential for child heart health. Children who do not sleep enough or who don´t sleep deeply will often be at a higher risk for diabetes and heart disease due to the fact that harmful sleep patterns are known to increase the amount of blood glucose and cortisol in the blood stream.
Reason #3: Sleeping Increases a Child´s Attention Span
There is evidence of a connection between good sleeping habits and attention spans in children. Children who routinely sleep less than ten hours each night are at a higher risk for developing hyperactivity and reduced attention span. Since these problems are directly connected to educational performance, getting enough sleep is thus also important to help your child thrive in school.
Reason #4: Sleep Reduces the Risk of Injury
We all know the feeling of being clumsy after a sleepless night. Lack of sleep directly affects the way our bodies and mind work the next day. Studies have shown that children who do not get enough sleep are more prone to certain injuries that are related to being clumsy and more impulsive. Next time your child comes home from school with a bruised knee from falling on the playground, perhaps you need to make sure she is getting enough sleep.
