Do we need to enforce Bedtimes?

There are a lot of us that do not want to admit that early bedtimes are important for our children and adolescents. But study after study proves that not getting enough sleep is impacting our society in ways that we can't even imagine. We cannot live up to our full potential if we aren't getting enough sleep!

It's one thing for an adult to decide that don't need to go to bed when they should; but our babies and children don't know any better. They do not understand that the reason they cannot control their emotions, or concentrate at school is because they are overtired; they can't articulate that their little mind and body is foggy and heavy.

​I want you to think really hard about how you feel when you aren't getting enough sleep! Now think about that feeling being inside a little one that often has little control over their emotions!?

Here is a cross-sectional study: Do parents’ support behaviours predict whether or not their children get sufficient sleep?  
by Evelyn Pyper, Daniel Harrington and Heather Manson 

"Sleep is an essential component of healthy cognitive and physical development. Lack of sleep may put children at risk for a variety of mental and physical health outcomes, including overweight, obesity and related chronic diseases. Given that children’s sleep duration has decreased in recent decades, there is a need to understand the determinants of child sleep, including the role of parental support behaviours. This study aims to determine the relative contribution of different types of parental support behaviours for predicting the likelihood that children meet recently established Canadian sleep guidelines."

Conclusion
"The current study revealed that the contribution of parental support behaviours to predictions of children meeting sleep guidelines varied with the type of support provided, and weekend versus weekday sleep. On weekdays, bedtime rule enforcement—not encouragement—was conducive to children achieving sufficient sleep.
Conversely, on weekends, no parental support behaviours predicted children meeting sleep guidelines, highlighting the need for future research on factors influencing child sleep and/or diminishing parental influence on weekends. Given the increasing pervasiveness of electronic media use by children and adolescents, the presence of screens in the bedroom remains a barrier to children achieving sufficient sleep [7, 26, 27]. If parental rules and encouragement to limit bedroom screen use do not support child sleep, efforts should focus on how the effectiveness of these supports can be maximized, and what other elements of the home and bedroom environment should be modified.
Moreover, consistent parental support throughout the week and for children of all ages may be an important, yet overlooked, component of overall sleep hygiene.
The key recommendation emerging from the present study is for parents to enforce rules about their child’s bedtime on weekdays in order to support them in achieving sufficient sleep. Preventing childhood overweight and obesity necessitates a balance of multiple health behaviours, including physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep. The importance of children getting a good night’s sleep, and the capacity of parents to help them do so, should be emphasized in public health efforts to promote healthy childhoods."

via BMC Public HealthBMC series–https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4334-4 
©Queen’s Printer for Ontario. 2017 Published: 24 May 2017