It is an unfortunate truth that as temperatures drop so does our physical activity level. This can go double for children and finding ways for all of us to get the recommended 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise daily can take a little imagination and persistence. As a place to start, here are some suggestions.
Turn off the TV/Limit Screen Time
In the winter it is a natural go-to activity to simply turn on the TV, tune into your favorite streaming service and before you know it you’ve binge-watched an entire season. As they say, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’, and frequently if children become bored, they will gravitate to activities that require more effort. Keeping note of how much screen time you and our children are getting can be the first step to getting up and moving. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends parents limit their kids’ screen time to two hours or less a day. By doing this, kids are much more likely to be active.
Brave the great outdoors, even if it’s cold
Just because it’s cold doesn’t mean you can’t go out and play. As I remind my kids on a routine basis, coats were made for a reason. Dressing up in layers, digging out the snow boots and putting on a pair of gloves leaves you fully prepared to face the cold. If dressed right, there is no reason why you can’t go outside and play your favorite sports and games. Take advantage of a recent winter storm to send your kids out to build a snowman, construct a fort, or go sledding at the local hill. It can keep kids both entertained and active.
Look to the great indoors
On especially bad days going for an indoor activity might be your only choice. Look for a location that incorporates physical activity like the local indoor pool, ropes course, skating rink, bowling alley and local gym. Check with the local rec center to see what classes or sports they may offer. At home, especially for young kids, you can look for games to play such as balloon volleyball, hopscotch, or an indoor obstacle course.
Break out an exercise video
While exercise videos might be a little old school, there are kid-friendly versions out there that might just get your kid up off the couch. With a quick search on Youtube or www.fitnessblender.com for kid exercise videos, you already have everything you need. You might also check the local library if you want that feel of the exercise DVD in your hands.
Workout while gaming
If your kid is a gamer at heart, why not turn it into some physical activity? While it’s likely never going be as intense as getting outside or engaging in real exercise, it’s definitely better than nothing and can be done from the warmth of your living room. The Xbox Kinect, PlayStation Move and Nintendo Wii have a handful of games that truly do get heart rates up.
Make your daily routine active
During the winter time there are some things that still just have to be done, and everyday activity can count just as much as going to the gym. If your kid generally walks to school, takes the dog out, or has certain chores, don’t change your routine just because of the season. Activity doesn’t have to be done all at once and it can be cumulative throughout the day. Establishing good habits that increase activity like taking the stairs whenever possible or parking at the far end of the parking lot when you go to the store can add in those few extra steps that just might make the difference.
Think about the last time you had a really good talk with someone. Maybe it was over lunch, or in the car, or over the phone. Or maybe, ideally, the conversation took place in a living room or other comfortable space, without time pressures or interruptions. If so, you made eye contact, observed facial expressions and body language, and shared personal moments together. This typically creates increased feelings of closeness and strengthens the bonds of friendship or family relationships. Afterward, you likely felt that you knew the other person better and that he or she knew you better in return. Does this kind of conversation happen often? Ever?
Now think of your most recent text or email thread. These, too, are often referred to as conversations. But do they serve the same purposes? Are they of equal value? It doesn’t take much thought to realize that the differences are striking and important. These digital communications inherently lack the level of interpersonal connection and intimacy that the face to face (and, to a lesser extent, phone) conversations provide. Here are several reasons:
We often must guess about the intended tone and emotion of texts and emails. Using emojis and other symbols help in this regard, but they can only go so far.
Text and email often embolden people to “say” things they would never verbalize face to face. Unfortunately, this is almost always in a negative sense.
There’s no rhythm to electronic communications, and sometimes longer or shorter pauses between responses are misinterpreted.
It’s difficult to know someone’s true response to our digital communications, because we can’t see facial expressions or body language, and responses can be tempered and thought out before being sent.
The overall tone of text messages and emails is cold and unemotional. A smiling emoji doesn’t have the same effect as a smiling human face.
The inability to make eye contact when communicating electronically means that it can never be as personal and meaningful as face to face conversation
There are many other items that could be on this list. Some argue that the muted emotions of digital communication can be a positive thing, leading to fewer arguments, or less contentious relationships. Another argument is that the additional time afforded to craft responses and make them “perfect” is a net positive as well.
However, being human is messy, and so are relationships. It’s often in the real-time, back and forth of in-person conversations that closeness is created, despite the stress – or maybe even because of it. If our communications are too clean and sterile, does the human part of the connection we should feel with each other really stand a chance?
The Empathy Crisis
At this point, you may be wondering why I am writing about this particular topic in a pediatric blog post. Rightfully so. But this actually has a lot to do with our children, from the youngest newborns to the current generation of teenagers. Young people today are part of the most “connected” generation there has ever been. But it is clear they are often failing to make the most important connections for long term happiness – emotional connections with each other and those around them. There is mounting evidence that one of the biggest casualties of the digital age is the ability of children to learn and feel empathy. This could have catastrophic consequences in the years and decades to come. But awareness and prevention are keys to averting the potential crisis.
Empathy is defined as “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.”¹ The ability to be empathic is an essential component of good mental and emotional health. Indeed, it is one of the key elements of all healthy societies, communities, and families. The lack of empathy results in all kinds of social ills.
Empathy is learned… and taught. Piaget and Freud once proposed that empathy can only be learned after a certain age. For Piaget, that age was 7. He claimed that children are inherently self-centered from 0-7 and unable to understand another’s point of view or feel the emotions of another. This is now known to be false, and even the youngest children can learn and show empathy. Children under 2 years of age can be observed to feel what another is feeling. Toddlers are sensitive to the feelings of their friends and will often mimic their emotions, a necessary precursor to empathy. But empathy needs to be repeatedly modeled and encouraged in toddlers before it becomes a part of their behavior. Three-year-olds can make the connection between emotions and desires, and they can respond to a friend’s distress with simple soothing gestures. Five and six-year-olds are learning how to read others’ feelings through their actions, gestures, and facial expressions — an essential part of empathy and social skill.²
Empathy Across Age Groups
From birth to about the age of 2, eye contact, facial expressions, physical contact, shared noises, soothing, and many other interactions are the mainstays of healthy nurturing. So what happens when new parents, instead of engaging with their infant for hours on end, as should be the case, devote their attention to a screen, small or large? Then, what happens when they put a small screen in the hands of their one-year-old and teach her how to swipe, open apps, and become fully engaged with such an entertaining device? Now all eyes are on screens, rather than on each other. If this pattern is repeated often enough, then a child may spend more time interacting with the virtual world than with their real-world teachers and mentors. How can she be expected to learn empathy, and myriad other essential interpersonal skills, in this world of limited face to face interaction?
In her book “Reclaiming Conversation,” author Sherry Turkle writes the following:
The work of psychiatrist Daniel Siegel has taught us that children need eye contact to develop parts of the brain that are involved with attachment. Without eye contact, there is a persistent sense of disconnection and problems with empathy. Siegel sums up what a moment of eye contact accomplishes: “Repeated tens of thousands of times in a child’s life, these small moments of mutual rapport [serve to] transmit the best part of our humanity – our capacity for love – from one generation to the next.”³
Yet study after study shows that we spend less and less time in personal interactions, physically making eye contact with each other and interacting. This is truer the younger the age of those studied. If parents are eating dinner with their children, that’s a wonderful opportunity to connect and bond. However, if they’re eating dinner with their children and looking at their phones the whole time, the opportunity is wasted, and they may as well be eating at different times and in different places.
Now picture a grade-schooler. At this stage, he craves the attention and affection of his parents and those around him. He requires frequent mentoring, modeling, and physical play. At school, he is learning the basics of acceptable behavior in various social settings and can see his peers’ reactions to him, both positive and negative. But if most of his interactions are digital, then he doesn’t get this feedback. Or worse, in some online and virtual interactions, what would normally be negative and harmful behavior may produce positive feedback and reinforcement (think violent video games, or viral videos of people treating each other badly, etc.).
Again, no viewing experience can replace all of the benefits of personal interaction, especially with parents. So if one of the most often modeled parental behaviors is looking at a phone screen, or a computer screen, or a television screen, what do we expect our grade-schoolers to learn? What do we expect them to view as most important to their parents? And what do we expect to be the result of minimal face to face interaction between parents and children?
When Teens Lack Empathy
Fast forward a few years, and an early teen is surprised to get in trouble over a post on social media. She doesn’t understand why her friend was hurt by it. After all, she was “just having fun” and “it’s not real.” When asked to put herself in her friend’s position, so she can comprehend how her friend felt, it’s as if she doesn’t understand the concept. The idea of apologizing to her friend face to face is out of the question. She does manage to admit that she never would have said the words in her post directly to someone in person but also admits that she is unlikely to change her online behavior.
It turns out that this teen’s limited personal interactions are with a small group of people who are very similar to her. The vast majority of her communications are on social media, generated on her phone, and the only feedback she receives is through likes, retweets, repostings, and comments. She prefers to communicate, even with her friends, by digital means rather than in person. And while she says that she loves to hang out with her friends, she is typically on her phone at those times, while her friends are on theirs. This has been referred to as being “alone together.” She spends far more time on screens than she does in actual conversations with the people around her. Statistics show that this is the case for the vast majority of teens today. The fact that most teens are more connected to electronics than to each other and their families should be unsettling to all of us.
The Cost of Tech Success
Among today’s parents of children and teens, there is a growing feeling that we were blindsided by the onslaught of digital devices over the past several years. With all of the amazing things these devices can do and their many applications, we didn’t think twice about sharing these miracles with our children. Once all of these devices came within reach of the average consumer, and we could buy phones and tablets and computers and gaming devices for ourselves and our children, we never stopped to ask ourselves if we should.
These devices and apps and games were created to be used. Success in the tech world is measured by the amount of time people spend using a product. Make no mistake about it, addiction is the goal. An addicted consumer represents a constant revenue stream. It’s very telling that many of the leaders of the biggest tech companies are notorious for not allowing their own children to use tech. Waldorf School, one of the most reputable schools in Silicon Valley, forbids the use of electronics anywhere on campus. They even discourage screens at home. Tech giants know exactly how dangerous and harmful their own creations can be, and they try to protect their children from it. And they start from the time they’re born. It’s bad enough if teens are dependent on their phones and devices, but how much worse is it when that dependency begins before preschool?
What Can Be Done?
Delay the age at which children are exposed to these devices. This will not be easy, and for some, it is obviously too late. But the American Academy of Pediatrics has long warned about the use of screens too early in life, and the detrimental effects it can have on normal social and intellectual development.4 So while it may be cute that your 2 years old knows how to work your smartphone, it’s difficult to measure the harm that may be done to a whole generation of tech savvy but socially stunted children.
Encourage children to play together without electronics. I believe that what happens on the playground during recess is just as important for long term success as what happens in the classroom. When children play together, without devices, they don’t just play. They talk, they joke, they laugh, they argue, they may even fight on occasion. They learn how to interact with each other, what’s appropriate and what is not. They learn how to be a friend, to think outside of themselves, and how to empathize. If this is only happening at recess, however, and not in the hours after school and on weekends, then children are unlikely to sufficiently learn these invaluable human lessons.
The teenager equivalent to this is hanging out without using electronics. I’m not sure this is even done anymore. What it will take is for some teens to no longer tolerate phone and device use when they are hanging out together. The current state of being “alone together” with everyone looking down at a screen can be replaced by conversation, actually getting to know each other and deepening friendships. It will take a brave few to do this, and then it may spread. We can encourage our teens to be among the trendsetters.
Many are now recommending that no one under the age of 16 should have a smartphone. And those over 16, who have a smartphone, should be closely supervised, with parents checking on their phone and social media accounts regularly. These ideas are often met with derision from teens and parents alike and dismissed as being out of touch with the realities of today. But today’s reality is not a great one. Levels of anxiety, depression, loneliness, feelings of isolation, bullying, and suicidal ideation have all increased in recent years. There is a direct correlation between these problems and the amount of time spent on electronics, particularly smartphones.5 Junior high students appear to be particularly vulnerable to these effects. For those who will not swap out their teen’s smartphone for a flip phone, then you may employ parental controls either on the phone itself or through your wireless carrier. This can be an important step in helping your teen decrease time spent (wasted) on the phone, opening up more of an opportunity for social interaction (actual talking).
Create tech free places or times. While at the dinner table, when the family is at home together, when friends are physically with each other, and while in the car – these are some of the times and places for disconnecting from devices and connecting with people. It will likely take some effort and persistence to change these habits, but creating more opportunities for conversation is a goal worth pursuing.
We must look at ourselves and make the changes we want to see our children make. Think back to the beginning of this article. I asked you to recall a conversation in which you truly connected with someone, and you were both better for it. When was the last time you had a moment like that with your teenagers? For those with younger children, when did you last have floor time with them, play a game together, look in each other’s eyes and really connect? If these experiences are not the norm, then there is work to be done.
Look Up From Your Phone, Shut Down The Display
In his 2014 video, Gary Turk poignantly made the case for consciously limiting our use of electronics in order to connect more often with those around us. Here is the link:
Some of my favorite lines from this video are the following:
“So look up from your phone, shut down the display.
Take in your surroundings, make the most of today.
Just one real connection is all it can take
To show you the difference that being there can make.”
We Simply Must Make Time for Conversation Again
This is true in the workplace, in public spaces, on buses and trains, and most importantly, in our homes. If you don’t feel you’re very good at it, then practice. Look people in the eye, smile, and speak. Express a generous thought. Share an experience. Tell a joke that falls flat, and then laugh because it wasn’t funny. Take time to listen, to learn, to empathize, to care. Create the bonds that can hold a friendship, a family, a company, a community together. This is done through the most human of all the media we have – conversation. We owe it to ourselves to ask the hard questions and make the hard changes. And we owe it to our children.
References
¹ Merriam-Webster.com (online dictionary)
² Ages & Stages: Empathy, by Carla Poole, Susan A. Miller, Ed.D., Ellen Booth Church
³ Reclaiming Conversation – The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, by Sherry Turkle
5Increases in Depressive Symptoms, Suicide-Related Outcomes, and Suicide Rates Among U.S. Adolescents After 2010 and Links to Increased New Media Screen Time
I decided one day that I wanted to do something fun with my daughter, just she and I. I came across an event where people get together and paint a one-of-a-kind masterpiece at a local venue. They provide the instructor, canvas, and the paint but it’s up to you to bring creativity. I thought this would be fun and also give me quality time with my barely teenage daughter (if she still remembers who I am considering how often she’s with friends or attached to her cellular device). When we arrived we sat next to another mother who must have had the same idea, since she had brought her daughter who was around the same age as mine. Here I sat, excited that we might be painting the next Picasso. My daughter was a little nervous as she had mentioned earlier that she didn’t get a single artistic gene from her parents. After all, we were promised that “anyone can paint”.
The instructor started telling us what paints to mix together to create the background. At first, my daughter would ask things like “What color does this need to be?” my response was “Whatever color you’d like. You get to choose.” About halfway through the night, she wasn’t asking me questions anymore, she was just enjoying painting and the creation in front of her. I couldn’t help but hear the mother next to me say “You’re doing it wrong. You need more yellow ones. Add more water.” Throughout the night, I continued to hear her say things like “Do you need help?” “Do you want me to do it for you?” “You need to outline that.” “Here, let me fix that for you.” At the end of the two-hour event, people were finishing the last details of their paintings. I looked over at my daughter. The look on her face was that of pure satisfaction. She was proud of her art and of what she had accomplished even if she had “messed up a little”. She was amazed that she, herself, had created something beautiful.
I couldn’t help but look around at everyone else’s paintings to see how differently they all looked. When I looked over at the mother and her daughter, I noticed her trying to console her daughter. Her daughter was crying – big alligator tears crying. I hear the mother say “What’s wrong?” The little girl responded with “I hate it. It’s ugly.” I was confused. Her painting looked as good as everyone else’s, if not better. I wondered why she would be so upset and then I realized that it was because she didn’t create it. She didn’t have a painting of her own to be proud of. More importantly, she didn’t learn the valuable lesson of making mistakes. Mistakes teach us a lot about what we are capable of. They help us be more understanding, open-minded and forgiving with ourselves and others. They help us grow and advance.
You may have heard the term “Helicopter Parent” before. Helicopter parenting is defined as a style of parenting in which an overprotective parent discourages a child’s independence by being too involved in their child’s life. A recent article by the American Psychological Association explains how over-controlling parenting is associated with the inability to self-regulate emotions and behavior. Researchers followed the same 422 children over an eight-year span as part of a study of social and emotional development. They found that helicopter parenting when the child was 2 years was associated with poorer emotional and behavioral regulation at age 5. During the assessment at age 5, they found that the greater the child’s emotional regulation, the less likely he or she was to have emotional problems. Those children with better emotional regulation at age 5 had better social skills and were more productive in school at age 10. They were able to calm themselves in stressful situations, conducted themselves appropriately, and had an easier time adjusting to a school environment.
A typical helicopter parent will swoop in at any sign of challenge or discomfort. In other words, they “hover”. They solve their children’s problems and make most of their decisions. Some parents don’t even know that they are doing this. Although they have only the best intentions to protect and help their children, it can be harmful to their children’s emotional and developmental well-being and can affect them into adulthood. Helicopter parenting can interfere with a child’s ability to develop independence, self-esteem, coping skills, life skills, self-worth, and the ability to problem-solve. It can also increase anxiety or give them a sense of entitlement. Allowing your child room to learn from trial and error helps facilitate self-confidence, pride, and feeling a sense of achievement.
How do I know if I’m a helicopter parent? Do you forbid your toddler to feed himself in fear he might make a mess? When the other children aren’t sharing toys, do you speak for your child? Are you over-involved in school or influence the teachers to change grades? Do you micromanage tasks or chores? Do you immediately try to fix every unpleasant emotion? Do you try to resolve every interpersonal conflict for your child? Do you complete your child’s homework assignments for them? Are you quick to criticize when your child doesn’t perform at your level of expectation? These are some examples of “hover” style parenting.
We learn from failure, from getting it wrong the first time and learning what we’ll do or not do next time. If your children always rely on you and don’t learn how to work through things and solve problems on their own, how can you expect that they will have those skills as an adult?
As parents, we want to be there for our kids, but when your parenting style interferes with them learning how to be independent, you may need to take a step back. As long as the environment is safe physically and emotionally for everyone, let your kids make some mistakes. Help them to feel confident in themselves and feel proud when they accomplish something on their own. It’s easier said than done I know. After all, we want to protect these precious gifts we’ve been given, but it’s in their best interest to learn how to get back up after they fall. Doing what is best for your children is sometimes allowing them to figure it out on their own.
By Hailey Heap Operations Director, Canyon View Pediatrics
Physician note,
I love articles like this because the researchers do long term follow up studies to determine the influence of parenting on child behavior outcomes. It’s what we all want to know – how do I interact with my kids to make an impact for good on their permanent character? I first saw this article as a press release. It came as one of those “eureka” moments where someone proved how to do it right. Hailey did a great job depicting the author’s conclusions. As I delved into the study details a few issues became apparent:
Eight years of longitudinal research is hard to do. The Study had 84% retention of families in the study. Much can be learned from this type of research.
Metrics analyzing behavior showed that the group of kids with a higher rate of externalizing or acting out behaviors at age 2 years went on to have more difficulty with emotional regulation at age 5 years and 10 years. Why this happens may be complicated. These kids may have had more difficult personalities, experienced more chaos at home, had underlying mental health burden or had parents with lower parenting skills, etc. For whatever reason, the children manifesting more behavior and emotional problems at 2 years of age went on to have more difficulty in the future.
The only measure of “over-controlling parenting” done was an observation of mother-child play at two years of age with scoring done from the Early Parenting Coding System. Researchers observed play style and child’s cooperation with toy pick up as well as the mother’s efforts to elicit cooperation. “Over-controlling Parents” were noted to be “too strict or demanding with regards to the child’s behavior, constantly guiding and creating a structured environment, commands were frequently repeated or accompanied by physical manipulations”. It may be hard to know how these observations translate into the home interactions over the next eight years.
Other parenting skills and issues impacting behavior were not measured. Clearly parent-child interactions are highly complex with many fluctuating influences. To name a few: parent and child personality and goodness of fit or harmony between parents and child personalities; parenting skills; mental health issues such as ADHD, anxiety, and depression; cognitive capacity; home stresses; environment dysfunction; social abilities; community resources and utilization of resources; sleep quality; medical factors; etc.
The Authors noticed a sustained impact of a child’s ability to regulate their emotions (emotional regulation) and inhibit inappropriate behavior responses (inhibitory control) on future functioning at 5 and 8 years of age. It is surmised that the “over-controlling parenting” style had a detrimental effect on both emotional regulation and inhibitory control. The helicopter parenting style noted at 2 years of age was associated with worse function but cannot be proved as the cause of worse functioning from this study.
The price of dysfunction increases over time. Children with poorer self-regulatory skills at age 5 had more difficulty with social, emotional, and academic functioning at age 10.
Take-home points for me:
Helping children learn emotional regulation and inhibitory control is important. These abilities are the most crucial in social settings.
Learning emotional skills requires practice just like learning anything else. It’s good to place kids in social settings like Hailey did with her daughter, where they get to practice social skills emotional regulation and inhibiting inappropriate behavior. For my kids it’s sports… They get to fail and succeed in front of large groups of people over and over again while they practice regulating themselves with resilience while continuing to try to progress.
Allow kids to experience negative emotions without saving them too fast. Much of our society has evolved an attitude that negative emotions are inappropriate and need to be avoided. Many parents save their children from even the slightest of unpleasant feelings. Permissiveness and overindulgence contribute to many dysfunctions including social ineffectiveness, obesity, electronics addiction, academic failure, sleep disruption, behavior and conduct problems. Occasionally experiencing unpleasant emotions is an integral part of achieving goals, developing character and interacting with people. Shielding children completely from undesirable emotions inhibits progress.
Be sensitive and empathetic without fixing everything. One of the best paragraphs in the study reads “Parents who are sensitive to children’s needs during emotionally challenging situations and respond to children’s failed self-regulatory attempts in a supportive and distress-reducing manner, are believed to guide children in developing the skills necessary to down-regulate their arousal and control their behavioral impulses. They teach children which strategies are most effective; in turn, this knowledge is transferred to the larger social world when children act autonomously (Sroufe, 1996).” Parents can have firm expectations and be loving and caring at the same time.
There is a healthy parenting balance somewhere between the military -helicopter parent and ultra-permissive parent. The coined term is Authoritative Parent. See previous behavior blog articles for this description. Authoritative parenting involves setting limits, having an expectation, letting kids experience, allowing kids to fail when the price is low, being emotionally supportive, providing empathy and encouraging resilient perseverance.
Problems with behavior, emotional regulation, inhibitory control, and social dysfunction tend to persist over time if not addressed. The problems are multifactorial and often require skilled professional help. Don’t sweep emotional and behavior issues under the carpet. All of our pediatricians have many years of experience from their pediatric practice and raising children of their own to help guide you through difficult issues. The price of dysfunction increases as children grow.
References: Childhood Self-Regulation as a Mechanism Through Which Early Over-controlling Parenting Is Associated With Adjustment in Preadolescence Nicole B. Perry, Jessica M. Dollar, Susan D. Calkins, Susan P. Keane, and Lilly Shanahan, http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/dev-dev0000536.pdf Helicopter Parenting May Negatively Affect Children’s Emotional Well-Being, Behavior, http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2018/06/helicopter-parenting.aspx Helicopter parenting definition, Dictionary.com
Considering how important sleep is to our proper functioning as human beings it is interesting how easy it is for our sleep cycles to be disrupted, either by circumstances outside our control or more commonly by our own choices. While some view sleep as a necessary nuisance it is clear that good sleep patterns contribute to improved school/work performance, help us maintain a healthier weight, and give us time for mental and physical restoration.
When it comes to school or the workplace sleep deprivation often manifests as decreased attention span and difficulty in task completion. You may notice these are similar symptoms that we associate with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). At times academic struggles can be linked directly back to poor sleep routines and once those bad habits are corrected there is a corresponding improvement in school. During my time as a Medical Officer for the Navy if there is one thing that I learned, and learned well, it was that the effectiveness of at Sailor or Marine declines rapidly once they become sleep deprived and at times you needed to order them to get some sleep to ensure that they were ready to complete the mission. As a parent, I’ve also found this same principle frequently holds true for my own children as well.
Another interesting correlation is that the more sleep deprived you become the more likely you are to be overweight. One interesting study by Janice F. Bell, Ph.D., MPH, of the University of Washington conducted in between 1997 and 2002 found that children who did not get adequate nighttime sleep between the ages of zero to 4 years were 33%more likely to be obese than children who had adequate sleep. These effects were slightly more noticeable in those aged 5 to 13 years who were 36% more likely to be obese. People often ask me why would inadequate sleep lead to this weight gain? While the complex answer involves the changes that occur to hormone release, the more straight-forward answer is that when we are tired we eat more to try to increase our energy levels. Any good weight maintenance or weight loss plan should begin with ensuring adequate sleep is occurring.
One final thing to consider is that sleep is essential to the restoration of both mind and body. I frequently talk with teenagers who have always been good students but begin struggling in their very busy lives as they are involved with multiple after school activities and part-time jobs. The primary concern they present with is that “I just feel tired.” Parents are often concerned this reflects a thyroid problem or some other chronic disease, but once I ask a few questions it becomes clear that the real problem is they are only getting 5-6 hours of sleep a night. While a person can compensate for a while with decreased sleep, eventually they will become rundown because it is during sleep that the body rebuilds muscle and the brain organizes all the information and stimuli that it has received during the day. When you or your child begin to feel to run down a good first step is to double your efforts to get adequate sleep.
Some general guideline on sleep amounts are listed below:
Infants 4 months to 12 months should sleep 12 to 16 hours per 24 hours (including naps) on a regular basis to promote optimal health.
Children 1 to 2 years of age should sleep 11 to 14 hours per 24 hours (including naps) on a regular basis to promote optimal health.
Children 3 to 5 years of age should sleep 10 to 13 hours per 24 hours (including naps) on a regular basis to promote optimal health.
Children 6 to 12 years of age should sleep 9 to 12 hours per 24 hours on a regular basis to promote optimal health.
Teenagers 13 to 18 years of age should sleep 8 to 10 hours per 24 hours on a regular basis to promote optimal health.
If your attempts to improve your child’s sleep patterns have been unsuccessful and you would like to discuss it further, all of the Pediatricians here at Canyon View Pediatrics are ready to help.
