Kids Need Their Sleep

As a kid, I remember getting regular times to go to bed. My brothers and I had a routine which included getting into our pajamas and doing our teeth. Then we said good night and went to bed. If we had our lights on to read, they were sure to let us know we had to quit and go to sleep. They recognized we need a good sleep to handle our busy days at school or even just to stay healthy.

Today. many folks let their kids stay up later and do not realize how this affects the attention span of a child, not to mention the over all health. We know through science that sleep is when the brain gets rid of plaque. I like to think of it as vacuum cleaning the mind. It clears the cobwebs so to speak and allows us to start all over, fresh the next day.

It is more important than we used to think. People who do not get enough sleep do not just perform badly. They actually form the early signs of dementia which comes much sooner for those night owls who see no purpose in doing it. In fact, kids aged 6-12 years old need 9-12 hours of quality sleep. Those are the findings according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Not only that, kids who do not rest enough can get high blood pressure, depression and obesity. Further, it affects their behavior. These days with all the things that can bring down the quality of life, it just makes sense to handle the ones that are easy enough for us to do. I hope this makes you think twice about sleep and your child.