14 DAY TRIAL // A new scientific study comes to shed some light onto why some children find it more difficult to fall asleep than others. The explanation that researchers found resided within the level of activity the youngsters performed on any given day. While parents have known for a long time that, if their kids play a lot, they will sleep undisturbed and fall asleep fast, the new investigation also reveals that, for each hour they spend idling around, they take three minutes more to nod off. The study was conducted by experts at the Monash University, in Melbourne, and the University of Auckland, in Australia.
In an interesting turn of events, the investigators uncovered that there were no differences in terms of sleep between children that sat around reading books, those watching TV, or those simply staring at the ceiling. This is somewhat counter-intuitive, considering that watching television is usually touted to be detrimental to children's rest. Additionally, data collected from the Archives of Disease in Childhood revealed that there were no significant differences in terms of general behavior between active youngsters and sedentary ones. For the study, the sleeping habits of more than 519 children aged seven were observed.
“As short sleep duration is associated with obesity and lower cognitive performance, community emphasis on the importance of promoting healthy sleep in children is vitally important. This study emphasizes the importance of physical activity for children, not only for fitness, cardiovascular health and weight control, but also for sleep,” the researchers wrote, BBC News reports.
The study revealed that those kids who were engaged in physical activities throughout the day took less to fall asleep, and also that they slept for longer. Conversely, sedentary youngsters were far more likely to nod off slower, to sleep less, and to have an overall diminished quality of sleep. Additionally, the investigators report that they did not find any significant statistical differences in sleep quality between children going to bed before or after 9 pm at night.
“Activity is not the be all and end all, and shouldn't be encouraged right before bedtime. What's essential is a routine wind-down hour, a quiet time before bed. A warm bath, but no longer than 10 minutes, and then straight into a darkened bedroom. That way you make the most of the natural sleep trigger of the warm water, and you can cap it all off with a bedtime story,” Mandy Gurney, who is the founder of Millpond, a children's sleep clinic, advised.