No one has ever denied the importance of sleep. It’s essential to a human’s ability to be efficient and productive in society. As your children grow, they’ll develop new sleeping patterns that can hinder and harm their chances to catch a full night’s rest, which can put a damper on their academic success.
A full night’s rest for growing children, for those who don’t know, is suggested to be roughly 8 -10 hours per night. That seems a bit farfetched, right? By the time your kids have grown to be preteens and teens, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to reach that recommended amount of rest each night. They’ll be more preoccupied with school and extracurricular activities, and they’ll be dealing with hormonal changes in their body which makes it more difficult to get some shuteye.
Thankfully, researchers are finding new ways to help preteens and teens get the recommended amount of sleep each night. Unfortunately for kids, this doesn’t mean sleeping later in the morning; it means sleeping earlier in the evening.
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The Journal of Sleep Research published a study called, “Sleep and academic performance in later adolescence: results from a large population-based study”. As you can tell, the focus of this study was to analyse sleeping patterns and apply those findings to teens/preteens academic success.
The study, conducted by researchers at Uni Research, in collaboration with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Ørebro University, and University of California, Berkeley analysed data from a 2012 Norwegian study. Wherein 8,000 Norwegian students of varying ages (namely teens/preteens) were observed. The data also tracked these students’ GPA and estimated sleeping hours.
What the study found is that students sleeping between the hours of 10-11p.m. each night were yielding higher grades in their academics. Successful teens also monitored their sleeping habits on the weekends. Furthermore, students who slept late on weekends saw lower scores in their academics. “Our findings suggest that going to bed earlier, and encouraging similar bed- and sleeping times during the week, are important for academic performance,” said lead researcher Mari Hysing.
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Essentially, what the biggest finding was for this study was that preteens and teens struggle to find ways to get 8-10 hours of sleep each night. Those who made efforts to sleep earlier in order to achieve that suggested amount reaped the benefits in terms of academic success and productivity.
In summation, parents, if your kids are struggling to get a research approved recommended amount of sleep, the key is to sleep earlier!
If you have any insights, questions or comments regarding the topic, please share them with us!