Principal Reflections

PRINCIPAL REFLECTIONS

           A short message from Dr Jake

Dear Parents & Friends,

One of the Key Ingredients of Good Learning: Sleep

Parents have always been reliable sources of advice to their children. For example, here is a piece of advice from a mother to daughter: “Cook a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you get rid of him for the whole weekend!” Child psychologists have, likewise, been a reliable source of advice to parents and their current advice is: “Make sure your children have adequate sleep every night.” The reason for this advice is that children’s behaviour, performance and mood are impaired by lack of sleep.

Sleep specialist, Dr Chris Seton, believes that electronic media and mobile phone use, play a part in children’s sleep deprivation: “Texting is worse than talking on the phone because kids stay awake waiting for the next message. Although we don’t have good figures for this in Australia, a study of 13 year-olds in the U.S., that included checking mobile phone numbers, found that 45% of them used their phones after 3.00a.m.”. He urged parents to be more assertive about keeping computers and t.v.’s out of children’s bedrooms and making it a rule that mobiles stay on the kitchen table until morning.

Dr Seton suggested that the best way to judge how much sleep a child needs is to assess whether it’s “enough for them to wake spontaneously - meaning without an alarm clock - on most mornings and avoid tiredness during the day until the last hour before bedtime.” When it comes to how much sleep our children need, the general consensus appears to be: 10-11 hours per night for children 6 to 9 years old; 9-10 hours for children 10-14 years old; ages 15 and over need 8-9 hours per night.

Children, nowadays, have a variety of sporting, cultural and academic commitments both before and after school. Even though these activities are important physically, socially and perhaps economically, we parents need to ensure that they are not at the expense of our children’s required level of sleep.

Some of the symptoms of sleep deprivation in children include moodiness and irritability, temper tantrums, the tendency to emotionally “explode” at the slightest provocation, over activity and hyperactive behaviour, grogginess when they wake up in the morning, reluctance to get out of bed in the morning. (Newcastle Sleep Disorders Centre).

Sleep loss can cause a range of schooling problems including poor behaviour, poor concentration, under performance leading to poor academic results. In teenagers, sleep deprivation can lead to problems with impulse control, which leads to risk-taking behaviours, and increased risk of depression. Surprisingly, sleep deprivation affects adults and children differently; adults tend to become drowsy, whereas, children tend to “rev-up.”

So, what advice is there for parents to assist good sleeping habits for our children? Well firstly, there is the usual piece of advice: be a role model. Model the importance of sleep, rest and relaxation; maybe model reading before bedtime as a means to relax. No drinks that contain caffeine or food or drinks that contain lots of sugar especially late in the day. Make sleep a number one priority and monitor the effects that multiple after school activities and jobs have on the amount of sleep time that children have available.

Of course, grandparents might have some advice to offer such as, “Early to bed, early to rise enables you to be healthy, wealthy and wise”.  Author unknown.

Remember, a sleep deprived child is unable to fully engage in their learning and makes the teacher's job much harder. This in turn increases the learning gap which is a long term disadvantage to your child. 

Should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us as we are only too happy to help.

Peace & Best Wishes

Dr Jake Madden

(Principal, St Edward's Primary School)