Media Release
December 17 2007
Parents and kids pay the price for late bedtimes during holidays
Discarding
regular sleep patterns for later bedtimes during school holidays can
leave children with major sleep issues that can be difficult to resolve
when school resumes, according to UniSA’s Paediatric Sleep Research
Fellow,
Dr Sarah Blunden.
“Children can be very sensitive to changes in sleep patterns. Getting
just a half hour less sleep than normal can make a big difference to
some children that results in irritability and ‘ratty’ behaviour during
the daytime,” Dr Blunden said.
“When children have a regular pattern of sleep and wake times during the
school term, their bodies establish strict body rhythms that don’t
change very quickly. Similarly, adults who change their established
sleeping pattern or rhythm by going to bed later on weekends and waking
up later, find it much more difficult to get to work on Monday because
their bodies have a set rhythm that makes it harder for them to readily
adapt to the changes,” she said.
“If children normally get nine hours of sleep, then they still need to
get nine hours of sleep, regardless of when they went to bed. Even on
holidays, children still need the right amount of sleep,” Dr Blunden
said.
“Christmas is an exciting time and it’s difficult to get children to
sleep when they’re excited and have eaten lots of sugary foods. Children
will push buttons and try very hard to stay awake and resist going to
bed.
“Allowing children to stay up late with the expectation that they will
be more ‘knocked out’ might, on the contrary, move them to be more
hyperactive and crazy, which will not be helpful because both children
and parents have to deal with it the next day,” she said.
Dr Blunden says that eating snacks that are spicy or high in sugar
before going to bed is very bad anytime, and even more so over the
festive season because it is an exciting time anyway, without the
sweets, so parents need to set limits.
“Kids need to know a range of behaviours that they can and can’t do and
just because it’s Christmas doesn’t mean that the rules should change,”
she said.
While Dr Blunden agrees that a rest from the strict sleep routine for
school and work can be a good thing, and it’s fine on occasion for
children get less sleep, when parents allow their children to stay up
late on a regular basis, they are setting themselves and their children
up for major sleep issues that can be difficult to resolve long after
the holidays have ended.
“I think there has to be a trade-off. For children who can negotiate,
from the ages of about three or four years onwards, a behaviour
management limit should be set. For example, parents could say, ‘Would
you like to open your present in the morning? Yes? Well then you need to
go to sleep now’.”
Dr Blunden also recommends that parents adopt a calming routine before
bedtime, starting an hour before bedtime. There should be no television
because that excites children and has implications in terms of content
and light emitted, which keeps them awake. The calming routine also
includes hot chocolate, a calming bath, and special reading time with
Mum and Dad.
“The calming routine is most important as it prepares children for sleep
and encourages bedtime to be a pleasant time. Spending time together
then is great and often results in decreased sleep onset time. Calming
will help the children to be in good spirits the next day. Setting up a
calming bedtime routine with ‘together time’ over Christmas is often
difficult with the excitement, but definitely worth it in the long run,”
she said.
If sleep times have gone beyond the occasional late night over the
holiday break, Dr Blunden recommends that in the week or so before
school begins, parents start edging their children’s bedtimes back by
about 15 minutes each night and wakeup times back by about 15 minutes
too so that sleep and wake times move towards the targeted times
necessary to get their sleep routine back on track for school.
Dr Blunden said that during the first week of school she is swamped by
calls from desperate parents wanting to come to her clinic to get help
with sleep issues after allowing their children’s sleep routines to go
out ‘of the window’ during the holidays.
Contact for interview
- Dr Sarah Blunden office (08) 8302 1972 mobile 0414 700 953 email sarah.blunden@unisa.edu.au
Media contact
- Geraldine Hinter office (08) 8302 0963 mobile 0417 861832 email geraldine.hinter@unisa.edu.au