Elementary age bedtimes

[SKL]

I'm not sure about sleep research in school kids.  How do they isolate the hours of sleep from the reasons behind it - like the amount of homework, less exercise, different kinds of stress, variations in routine / stability, screen time, diet, and various parenting differences?  I mean, sure, if a kid is getting 4 hours of sleep that is an issue, but if we're comparing 9.5 to 10 hours, then I am not so sure we can draw such clear conclusions.

 

One thing I've read is that gifted kids on average "need" less sleep than others.  How does that play into this discussion?  On the other hand, I've read that lack of sleep seems to increase the incidence of ADHD.

[Rachel]

There has been a lot of research on this recently, and the conclusion seems to be that it is not some - it is many or even most. And that has real and very significant consequences in terms of health, academic progress, and even things like obesity. And increasingly it is becoming tied up with parents medicating children to sleep as well, often without medical supervision.

 

I do find it interesting that with infant sleep in particular, people often over-look that the reason some of the recommendations seem to work is that the babies don't sleep as well. I fairly regularly hear a mom of a young baby saying how hard it is to get her baby to sleep and think that if I was forced to sleep on my back in a cool room with no blankets I wouldn't sleep well either.

I'm one of those parents who finally let my son sleep on his belly so that he would sleep. I figured he was either going to have SIDS or I was going to lose my mind. Once he started sleeping, I started sleeping and everyone was happier.