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Resolving to Sleep Better This Year15 Tips to Improve Sleep for You & Your Kids
By Sarah Arnold, Psy.D
Happy New Year! This newsletter may have you feeling rested after the holidays or exhausted after the busy season. Either way, it is a good time to check in on sleep habits.
Many times, adults deprive themselves of the one thing that can help refresh the body and mind overnight: sleep. As adults, we can make choices that cause our sleep patterns to go awry. Kids may also insist on changing their bedtimes, however, it is the adults’ duty to help them adopt healthy sleep habits while they’re young, so they can grow into happy, energetic, and healthy adults.
For both adults and kids, sleep is vital; sleep is food for the brain. During sleep, important body functions and brain activity occur. Skipping sleep can be harmful – even deadly, particularly if you are behind the wheel of a vehicle. For example, drowsiness and falling asleep at the wheel causes more than 100,000 car accidents every year.
One’s immune system also is affected when tired, so you are more likely to get sick or struggle to recover from an illness when sleep deprived.
Also, when one is sleep deprived, it shows physically: mood and performance are affected. Sleepiness can make you or your child cranky and make it difficult to get along with others.
For children, academic performance can also be affected.
Recommended Sleep
Having understood the importance of sleep, exactly how much sleep is recommended? Experts suggest the following:
- 1-3 year olds: 12-14 hours per day (including naps)
- 3-6 year olds: 10 ¾ -12 hours (including naps in the earlier years, with naps becoming shorter and then stopping)
- 7-12 year olds: 10-11 hours
- 12-18 year olds: 8 ½ -9 ½ hours
- Adults: 7-8 hours
Interestingly, in the past two decades, teens and adults are sleeping less, primarily putting social or work pressures at fault. In fact, about 1/3 of American adults report not sleeping enough to feel rested and 85% of teens studied are not getting the rest the need.
Understanding Teen Sleep
While social demands, extracurricular activities, and diet (including caffeine intake) are partly at fault for the lack of sleep in teens, there is also a biological change in teenagers that causes them to feel sleepy at later times. Melatonin, the chemical that is released in our bodies to signal the onset of sleep, is released later for teens, causing them to first feel sleepy at about 11:00 p.m., causing the desire for both later sleep and wake times during adolescence. This “sleep phase shift” happens in adolescence and then shifts back a couple of hours again in adulthood. (Hence the reason, you may feel tired at 9-10 pm in contrast to your teen.) Nonetheless, sleep is vital for teens and they can benefit from using the same sleep tips as adults to ensure they get proper rest for their physical and emotional health.
Sleep Tips for Children
1. Consistency in Routine: Children thrive on routine. Create a bedtime routine that follows the same order and timing each night and stick to it! Be sure to include wind down time in the routine and eliminate stimulating activities before bedtime, such as TV, computer use and video games. The child’s bed should be associated with sleep, and relaxing activities, rather than brain stimulating screen time. An example of a routine might be:
a. Take a bath
b. Put on pajamas
c. Brush teeth
d. Read a story
e. Go to bed
f. Say goodnight
2. Encourage Children to Fall Asleep on Their Own. A child that can fall asleep independently will also learn other self-soothing behavior and will be able to return to sleep during normal nighttime awakenings, sleeping better through the night (And you sleep better then too!)
Dawn Huebner suggests several ideas in her book “What to Do When you Dread Your Bed,” with one including using “tickets” (which can be post-it notes) as a reward system for your child staying in bed all night. She suggests putting 3 tickets on your child’s doorframe that the child can use if s/he needs to leave their room each night or call out to you for a glass of water, etc. The child then turns in the amount of tickets left in the morning and when the child accumulates 10 tickets, s/he earns a prize, thus rewarding the child for self-soothing throughout the night.
3. Avoid caffeine within 6 hours of bedtime
4. Keep noise levels low, rooms dark (with the exception of a night light), and indoor temperatures slightly cool
5. Talk to your pediatrician if your child shows difficulty falling asleep and maintaining sleep, especially with daytime sleepiness or behavioral problems or if your child snores especially loud or has breathing problems at night
Sleep Tips for Teens and Adults
- Stick to a regular sleep schedule
- Sleep in a dark, cool, and quiet bedroom
- Avoid stimulating activities within two hours of bedtime
- Avoid caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol in the evening
- Avoid going to bed on a full or empty stomach
- Avoid distractions in bedroom (e.g. doing work or watching TV in bed), so your body associates your bed with sleep rather than other thoughts
- Manage stress well
- Exercise regularly
- Maintain a healthy weight
- See your physician if you are concerned about chronic sleep problems
Recommended Reading
What to Do When You Dread Your Bed by Dawn Huebner
Sleep Log
Keeping a sleep log can increase awareness of where trouble spots may be in your sleep habits. You can share the log with your physician if there are concerns also. To print a Sleep Log for you or your child, go to:
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