Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child Page 0,1

didn't want to hear all that crying when he didn't want to sleep. But now he's two, and I'm getting tired of those constant bedtime battles. There are times when I wish he would simply just settle down and be less wild.

Sound familiar?

All kids occasionally are firecrackers when things are not going their way. But why do some kids have much shorter fuses than others?

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child will explain how fatigue caused by poor-quality sleep makes some children pop off more often or explode with more force than others. It will also explain how chronic fatigue can reduce your child's ability to succeed in school. This book will show how you can nurture, enhance, and maintain calm and alert behavior in your child by instilling good sleep habits.

I will lead you on a tour through the shadows of your child's night and shine my flashlight on the most frustrating nocturnal problems that can disrupt sleep. The first leg of our journey covers terrain that may not be familiar even to experienced parents. Part I, “How Children Sleep,” describes healthy sleep, disturbed sleep, sleep problems, and common myths about sleeping. It also covers some sad territory that has not been explored previously: the harmful effects of disturbed sleep when everyone in the family suffers from fatigue. The second part of our journey, “How Parents Can Help Their Children Establish Healthy Sleep Habits,” is an age-specific guide to understanding sleep patterns and solving common sleep problems in your child. Finally, in Part III, we explore “Other Sleep Disturbances and Concerns.” When we finish our tour, you will be able to direct your own child toward healthy sleep habits.

SLEEP DEPRIVATION HARMS CHILDREN

Sleep deprivation can be prevented and treated.

What do I mean by healthy sleep?

Do you know how to get a good night's sleep and feel rested? I think I do. But sometimes I go to bed too early, sometimes too late—and I'm supposed to know a lot about sleeping! The truth is that no one really knows exactly how to program good sleep so that we always feel rested. In fact, we're really in the dark ages when it comes to understanding how sleep works. Interestingly enough, adult volunteers in early sleep studies were kept in deep, dark caves. This was done to eliminate day-and nighttime cues so that researchers could study how sleep affects our body and our feelings. Of course, sleep researchers now use specifically designed laboratories and trick clocks that run faster or slower than “real” time to figure out how our biological rhythms, or “internal clocks,” work when external time cues are removed. Studies also have been performed on shift workers and Air Force pilots who often cross time zones and suffer from jet-lag syndrome to observe how time differences affect sleep patterns.

But children's sleep habits have not been studied in such detail. Obviously, it's a bigger problem if a bomber crew carrying nuclear weapons is inattentive because of a lack of sleep or jet-lag syndrome than if a child has fatigue-driven temper tantrums. But if it's your child, you might not agree!

I have studied both healthy and disturbed sleep in thousands of children as founder of the original Sleep Disorders Center at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. I have helped hundreds of families understand how their children's sleep habits are directly connected to how they behave and how they will do in school. Based on this research, my general pediatric practice spanning more than thirty years, and life with my own four sons and four grandchildren, I have discovered that there is hope for bleary-eyed parents. In fact, both you and your child can benefit from this knowledge. I personally benefited from my sleep research: I used to think naps were a waste of time. I wanted to spend time with my boys, and I had all those chores to do. The result? I was combative and irritable from accumulated sleeplessness. Now I think my whole family benefits when I take the naps I need.

Prevention and treatment of unhealthy sleep habits in infants and young children are important because if they are uncorrected, they will persist. There is no automatic correction. Children do not simply outgrow these problems. The good news is that the harmful effects of unhealthy sleep are reversible when parents provide treatment. The younger the child, the more successful you will be in reversing the ill effects of unhealthy sleep.

Preventing the development of unhealthy sleep patterns is something all parents can do. But