DIscussion of NurtureShock, Chapter 2 "The Lost Hour"

We're talking about NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman all summer. One chapter every Friday. Jump in whenever you'd like. Last week we talked about Chapter 1 about praise. This week we're talking about Chapter 2 about sleep.

The chapter is called "The Lost Hour," because kids are getting an average of an hour less sleep every night now than we did thirty years ago. The first thing I love about this chapter is that Bronson and Merryman are looking at the facts, NOT blaming parents for this sleep deficit. They describe some of the factors that go into kids getting less sleep, and you can find yourself in some of them, but it's not going to make you feel judged. So you can read the research and feel like you want to act on what you read without feeling bad about yourself.

The upshot: Being shorted on sleep causes a lot of bad stuff to happen, for kids especially. I'm not going to repeat the whole chapter, but these are the main points they hit on:

• Being shorted sleep consistently during the formative growing years (up to age 21) can cause permanent rewiring of the brain structure.
• Missing an hour of sleep, for elementary school kids, causes a drop in performance equivalent to one grade level. And every 15 minutes missed for high schoolers corresponds to one letter grade. (15--fifteen minutes!)
• Missing sleep means that kids don't have the ability to absorb and process what they've learned neurologically. They also don't remember positive things, but remember negative things! So lack of sleep contributes to bad moods (surprise!) and clinical depression.
• Teenagers are not physically wired to fall asleep as early as kids and adults are, but they need as much or more sleep thank adults do. This means that starting high school early is having disastrous results in terms of depression and academic performance for teens.
• Lack of sleep means your body can't process the way it's supposed to, so lack of sleep is a big factor in childhood obesity, but it rarely gets mentioned.

Again, for the studies and actual stats and interpretations, read the book and not just my summary.

This all scared the crap out of me. My kids usually get a good amount of sleep, but I could see myself letting things slide--I already let them stay up "just an hour" later on weekends and in the summer. It also scared me for myself, because I'm consistently short on sleep, just because I don't go to bed at a decent hour. Duh.

NOTE: I don't think this chapter should make you reexamine anything if you're the parent of a child who's 2 years old or less. I'm going to assume that you're doing what you can to get the best and most sleep possible for everyone in your family (by figuring out how best to help your individual child sleep and then taking care of your own sleep needs as best you can). Bronson and Merryman are absolutely NOT saying "If your 6-month-old doesn't sleep through the night s/he is ruined forever!" like some other authors I don't need to mention. Babies are babies. You can help them sleep, but you can't sleep for them (ha!) and you can't force them to sleep any more than you can force them to learn to walk or talk. So if you're still in the long, lonely, scratchy tunnel of baby/toddler sleep, store this info away for when you actually have real control over bedtimes and waking times and aren't just trying to get more than 5 uninterrupted hours for survival purposes.

Thoughts? I don't think it's anything new than no sleep = cranky, but seeing it laid out in research was awesome/awful. I'd be reeeeeeally interested in hearing from teachers, specifically, on whether you can see any patterns in your students.

Next week: Chapter 3, "Why White Parents Don't Talk About Race." (Hint: It's not because we're jerks. Just the opposite.)

Comments

[the milliner]

I'm a little late to the party, but I have a good (OT) excuse - was on my first business trip without DS, and....it was a complete success (despite my much worrying that it would so not be)! So relieved to now have crossed off that milestone. OK, back to the topic at hand.

Though I generally agree with @Moxie and others who felt that the chapter wasn't judgemental or made parents feel guilty, I have to say that it still left me with some stress around the issue. Mostly for what @caramama said: Worries about The Future. I'll qualify all my comments with saying that DS is 2 and we've just in the last month gotten him to start sleeping through the night. (Woot!) Even though I'm getting fairly full nights' sleeps now, I'm still sleep deprived and so the sleep topic is still sensitive (hence perhaps part of the reason the chapter causes me a bit of stress, despite the fact I found it extremely interesting). Really, I think it's just the combination of knowing why kids need the amount of sleep they do, combined with the fact as others have mentioned that you can't force a kid to sleep, and well, the resulting stress around what to do if you can't get your kid to have the requisite amount.

We place sleep above almost every other issue in our parenting approach. It's rare that we'll forgo a nap in order to do some activity, or keep DS up late for special occasions. So after reading this chapter, I feel good that there are many, many great reasons to keep at it. And to be honest, just learning that kids need that time to process what they've learned is the extra kick I need to try and get DS to sleep later than 5am. Yes, @Koshercow and @LittlePumpkin, we've got one of those too. And it sucks.

For this early wake up time, I've had moderate success with rubbing DS' back (while he's standing in his crib, trying to climb out via me) while telling him that 'Papa is asleep, the dog is asleep, the cat is asleep...it's not time to wake up yet. time to go back to sleep'. He ends up curling up and going back to sleep until at least 6 or 6:30 am which I consider a reasonable wake-up time. So far, this has worked the 3 times I've tried it. After reading the chapter, I think I'm going to make more of a concerted effort to get him to sleep at least until 6am regularly. After sleep training for through the night I was at first thinking, well, I can deal with a 5am wake-up (way better than waking up multiple times in the night). But I think I have the energy now to push on further. Today he woke up at 5:30. Took me 1/2 an hour to get him back down (mostly BF). But, I got him to go back to sleep until 7:40!! A new record.

Depending on everything goes, we may decide to get one of those alarm clocks that change colour when it's time to wake up.

@Jac, I totally had the same reaction/thought as you did regarding electronics in the bedroom. DS is totally going to plug in anything he will eventually have in the living room to recharge overnight while he sleeps. I won't allow electronics (TV mainly) in our bedroom because, quite frankly, if there will be any activity other than sleep happening there, I don't want it to be TV! And having a computer in the bedroom totally stresses me out. Even though I use my computer for fun. For me computer = work = not relaxing, which is what a bedroom should be. So at least we'll be a good example for DS.

[Hendo]

Here's a different idea. I am sure that my parents' insistence on a 7.30 bedtime until I was in high school (I got up around 6.30) and an 8.30 bedtime for most of high school, completely and utterly fucked me up to have normal adult sleeping patterns. Until I was 18, the latest I had ever slept in was 9.30am (after a 2am bedtime, after a concert). All of this set my body clock so strongly that I just can't sleep in and catch up - if I don't go to bed at just the right time, which is really difficult if I want to have a normal adult's social life and stay awake after 9pm at night.

It sux.

So seriously... let your kids stay up... just occasionally... there are clear benefits to the routine but you can go too far!!!

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when I'm working, he'll do even more -- the weekdays are all mine. I do about 90-95% of the work during the week, regardless of my employment status, because he has an intense, inflexible job. I used to be ticked off about that situation, but I'm just used to it now.

[Lisa D]

Well, this post is more then a year old, but I'm going to comment anyway. :) SOmeone sent me a link to this discussion which was the first time I heard of NurtureShock and I just had to read it. I do wish that it had stated the amount of sleep that kids are getting now and in the past so we could compare ourselves!
My husband and I were discussing this and decided that the lack of sleep most likely stems from the rise of the two income family. There are just not enough hours in the day now to get everything done and have some quality family time so we sacrifice sleep. It is probably also that as a culture we have started to over schedule our kids with sports and music and chess club and whatever else so we do want to spend some time with them in the evenings. Even as a stay at home mom to a first grader involved in one sport and no other lessons, I am amazed at how much time school takes up and how temping it is to let him stay up late so we can have some time together as a family. We home schooled for kindergarten, and I am constantly temped to do so again. If his school wasn't so awesome I totally would.

[Coach outlet]

The author's point that prayer is still a powerful tool and suggest that even the kind of mindful prayer he outlines at the end can be messy, pleading and misguided...at least for those of us in transition.

I am very grateful for this article, as it is helping me on a path of turning back towards prayer, which I've long forsaken except in times of desperation.I remain religious and choose to live a worshipful life.

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