Sleeping tips for children

If parents often stay up late,

Children may also develop the habit of staying up late.

Switch between mobile phones and tablets.

Play games, watch cartoons...

Lack of self-control,

The heavy academic pressure,

More and more children are staying up late...

Data from the White Paper on the Sleep Status of Chinese Adolescents and Children show that:

More than 60% of children sleep less than 8 hours a day. Lack of sleep and staying up late often will inevitably affect children's physical and mental health.

What are the dangers of children staying up late?

1. Affects height growth

A very critical harm of staying up late is that it affects children's development. Children's growth and development, in addition to genetic factors, nutritional status, exercise, etc., is also related to the amount of growth hormone secretion.

Night is when children secrete the most growth hormone. If children do not rest at this time, it will affect the secretion of growth hormone. Generally speaking, children can grow taller if they get enough sleep every day.

2. Reduce the body's immunity

When children stay up late, their organs also stay up late. For example, the heart and brain of children are still in the development stage, so they are always overloaded and it is easy to leave hidden dangers. Children who often lack sleep will have weaker and weaker resistance, and may also have symptoms such as loss of appetite and lack of energy.

3. Affects the brain’s creativity

Without adequate sleep, it is difficult for children to concentrate fully. Some parents know that if children do not get enough sleep, they always look absent-minded and sometimes forget things. If they stay up late for a long time, it may also affect their intellectual development! Moreover, if they stay up late at night, they will feel sleepy during class during the day, which will affect their academic performance.

4. Impact on mental health

If children do not get enough sleep, they will be more likely to lose their temper. In the case of insufficient sleep, they will also be grumpy when waking up and it will be difficult to wake them up. In serious cases, they will also experience psychological conditions such as depression, anxiety, and tension.

Why don’t children sleep well?

The survey shows that the reasons why children stay up late are mostly:

1. Heavy academic burden

The child has more and more homework, and because of his procrastination, he often has to finish his homework until late at night.

2. The temptation of electronic products

Before going to bed, he would clamor to watch TV and play with his mobile phone, and he couldn't stop once he started.

3. Bad sleeping habits

I was too excited and emotional before going to bed, and I couldn't fall asleep for a long time lying in bed.

The next morning I lay in bed and couldn't get out. After getting up I didn't eat breakfast, and I rushed on the way to school. I felt sleepy the whole day and couldn't concentrate in class. After school I got home and fell into a vicious cycle of staying up late to do homework.

How to help children develop good sleeping habits?

1. Establish a bedtime ritual

When it's time to go to bed, parents should dim the lights, turn off electronic devices, and create a suitable sleeping environment, because noise, light and air can also affect children's sleep.

Scientists have investigated the bedtime habits of more than 600 children aged 3-5 years old: those with sleep problems are often still watching TV after 7 o'clock. So parents should try not to let their children play with mobile phones before bedtime, because it will excite the children's brains, and the blue light from the screen will affect the secretion of melatonin and disrupt the body's biological clock.

Parents can establish a "bedtime routine" with their children, such as bathing, drawing the curtains, telling stories, hugging, kissing, saying good night, etc., using these "signals" to calm the child's body and remind themselves "I will go to bed after doing these things."

2. Help your child establish the belief that a bed is only a place for sleeping

The beds in many families have too many functions, in addition to sleeping, they are also building blocks tables, study tables, trampolines, slides, etc. In this way, children will want to do something else after going to bed and will be reluctant to fall asleep.

Therefore, try not to pile miscellaneous items on the bed, and don’t let children play on the bed. Help your child conduct “situational training” with the bed - as soon as they get on the bed, they will have a conditioned reflex of “I want to calm down and get ready to go to bed”, which will help them fall asleep as soon as possible.

3. Try to keep a fixed sleep time

It takes some time for the biological clock to develop, so parents should try to set a good time for their children to go to bed and get up, so that their children's bodies can develop a regular routine. Parents should let their children know that they should not go to bed when they are tired, but must go to bed when the time comes. For example, if you decide to go to bed at 21:00, you must go to bed at 20:30, and don't do anything unrelated to sleep when you are in bed.

4. Be firm in your sleep routine

Once sleep rules are established, parental enforcement is more important than child compliance.

It is not advisable to ignore children's sleep time when going on vacation or to arbitrarily change their sleep habits because of their needs. Some children cannot fall asleep after lying on the bed, and they will get up or run out from time to time with these reasons: "I want to drink water." "I want to go to the toilet again." "I have a good idea, do you want to listen to it?"

In this case, parents can give their children some "authority tickets", for example, they can only use three "authority tickets" after going to bed every night, and one ticket will be used for each request, until all are used up. Generally speaking, most children can abide by such a game-like agreement.

The physical and mental health of children is based on sufficient and good-quality sleep. Parents should pay more attention to their children's sleep and help them develop good sleeping habits from an early age, which will benefit children throughout their lives.