Adequate sleep is key to good health, wellbeing and proper functioning across all life stages, but is especially critical for children.

Poor sleep can inhibit rapid growth and development in early childhood.

And it’s not just about sleep duration; the time one goes to bed also plays an important role in the physical, emotional, and cognitive development of children.

A consistent early bedtime is especially important for young children transitioning from biphasic sleep (where children still nap during the day) to monophasic sleep (where sleep happens at night).

Late sleepers don’t always get the recommended amount of sleep, but evidence also suggests late bedtime is associated with sleep quality problems and difficulty falling asleep.

All this can add up to concentration, memory, and behaviour issues in children.

An early bedtime is good for physical health, too

One study of low-income, preschool-aged children found not getting enough sleep was associated with a higher risk of obesity.

A review of academic literature on the question found poor sleep is increasingly common in children, and associations between short sleep duration in early childhood and obesity are consistently found.

Adequate sleep is key to good health. It’s worth noting that most of the studies on this question are cross-sectional, which means they look at data from a population at one specific point in time.

That has major limitations that make it hard to say poor sleep habits cause the higher obesity risk.

To know more, we need more longitudinal studies that examine change over time.

That said, emerging evidence from longitudinal studies supports the idea an early bedtime may be worth the battle.

One longitudinal study found: “Preschool-aged children with early weekday bedtimes were half as likely as children with late bedtimes to be obese as adolescents. Bedtimes are a modifiable routine that may help to prevent obesity.”

My own research , published last year with colleagues in the journal Acta Paediatrica , analysed four years of data from 1250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged five to eight years old.

The results highlight that even after controlling sociodemographic and lifestyle factors, children who had consistently late bedtimes (after 9.30pm) were on average 1.5 kilograms to 2.5 kilograms heavier at follow up three years later than children who go to bed early (about 7pm).

Nobody can yet say for sure what the exact relationship is between bedtime and obesity risk.

Maybe it’s that staying up late provides more opportunities for eating junk food or drinking caffeinated drinks.

Or there could be more complex physiological factors.

The body’s internal clock, which regulates sleep, also plays a crucial role in hormone secretion, glucose metabolism and energy balance.

Try to stick to the same bedtime.

How late is late?

Sleep habits are shaped by a range of biological and cultural factors.

When parents set their child’s bedtime, they’re influenced by cultural norms, lifestyle and what they know about the importance of sleep.

There are clear guidelines for sleep duration for each age group, but the time a child should go to bed isn’t always as clearly defined.

For a preschooler , I’d recommend a consistent bedtime between 7pm and 8pm to ensure adequate sleep (recognising, of course, that work and caring responsibilities can make this really difficult for some parents).

Develop an early bedtime routine for your child and try to stick to it, even when it’s “not a school night”.

Irregular bedtimes disrupt natural body rhythms and, as many parents know from direct experience, can lead to behavioural challenges in children.

Early childhood is a critical time in which the foundations of life-long habits are built.

Developing healthy sleep habits can set children on the right path for better future health and wellbeing.

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Yaqoot Fatima , Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article .

The post For children, it’s not just about getting enough sleep. Bedtime matters, too appeared first on The New Daily .

Anna’s mother is a GP, and each day, as Australian schools endured regular lockdowns, her mother travelled to work on the frontline.

Her father stayed home, taking over the household duties and looking after Anna, 10, and her 14-year-old sister.

“I loved that my dad finally stayed home and I got to know him for the first time in my life,’’ she told me.

But the judgement she delivered on her mother is brutal. What she remembers most, she says, is that her mother would arrive home and not hug her – or at least, not until she’d had a shower.

Anna, whose name has been changed, is one of 500 10-year-old girls I consulted last year while researching my book, Ten-Ager – what your daughter needs you to know about the transition from child to teen .

And they taught me how much we, as parents, we might not know about the tweens in our lives. COVID-19 is just one example.

We try to keep our children safe from the virus itself, but what about its impact on the family unit? Photo: Getty

I met Annas everywhere, who explained the silver lining in this pandemic: more time with dad . Being at home allowed dads the opportunity to engage in a game of cards, take a bike ride after work and share dinner together every night.

• Related: What lies ahead for the children of the pandemic

Long conversations replaced many of the short procedural chats on the drive between home and school. Girls noticed this, and raised it without prompting: Dad was home. Dad had dinner with us every night. Dad and I did this. Dad and I did that.

But when it came to Mum – when she worked outside the house in an essential service – girls were routinely harsh in their judgement.

“She chose them, not me,’’ Anna says.

A teddy bear placed in a window as part of a bear hunt game for children amid the coronavirus lockdown.

This is an interesting insight into biases, but it is also a telling example of how some of our 10-year-olds saw – and continue to see – the coronavirus as a threat to their safety and security.

For parents, it’s worth thinking about as the daily news cycle bounces between getting on with our lives and heading back home to wear masks.

For some, the pandemic was a bonus. Sleep-ins. Bullying complaints dropped. The marks of shy girls, and some on the spectrum, improved markedly. Anxiety decreased in some households, too.

• Related: One in three kids not prepared for school

But for many children, the ongoing uncertainty remains plain scary.

“At the end of this pandemic, will life ever go back to normal again, and when family are sick, will they ever get better?’’

That’s one question posed by a 10-year-old girl.

‘“I was scared,’’ another says.

Others told of their inability to sleep unless one of their parents was lying in bed with them, how they cried because they didn’t want to do school at home, how they missed their friends and wondered whether they’d ever see them again, how they missed their grandparents and their teachers and their playground and their sports, how they had to withdraw from theatre and ballet and Scouts, and how they worried that their family – mostly their mother – might die.

Young children are another knock-on casualty of the coronavirus pandemic.

Numerous studies both here and overseas pointed to increases in anxiety, stress and depression, and the need for that to be addressed.

• Related: The signs of COVID anxiety, depression in children

One study, by UNICEF Australia, found that only 52 per cent of boys and 38 per cent of girls aged 13 to 17 were coping well in mid-2020. It is unlikely to have been much different for 10-year-olds.

The struggles girls had with COVID were raised by many parents. Here’s a handful of representative comments:

‘She does not want us to use the word “corona” anymore.’

‘She is concerned about the world ending and never having achieved.’

‘I’m in treatment for breast cancer so she’s worried I will die if I get the virus.’

‘I’m a doctor so I’m working huge hours and often exhausted. She is envious of her friends who have their mums at home.’

She has cried a lot over this. She is afraid our family might get it.”

‘She keeps going over and over the problems (i.e. Why would someone eat a bat?).’

‘She has made some badges saying “Corona Virus Survivor”.’

‘She was washing her hands so much they were cracking and bleeding. She wasn’t sleeping because she caught a cough and kept panicking that she had COVID.’

Themes developed: of missed rites of passage, like school trips to Canberra and leadership ceremonies; missed birthday parties; upset routines; worries because mum or dad had lost their jobs. Daughters, according to medical experts, worried about these things more than sons.

School principals also noticed a decline in socialisation skills when schools resumed. Tweens were unable to look at each other, or talk to each other because they’d forgotten how.

Some children have found it difficult to adjust to returning to school – and the socialising that goes with it. Photo: Getty

Some schools are now specifically addressing that, along with individualised learning programs. School refusal has also increased; where girls are simply refusing to go to school, post lockdown.

Professor Sarah Blunden, the head of paediatric sleep research and a lecturer in clinical psychology at Central Queensland University, says part of the problem is the lack of control children – and adults – had with this pandemic.

“It’s not just about sleeping. It’s about everything,” she says.

“But when you are lying in bed at night, trying to sleep, and you’ve got less activity going on in your brain and your body, what’s going to come in? What are you thinking about?

Worries.

And what are you going to worry about? The most relevant thing on everybody’s mind. And 10-year-olds are going to be struggling much more than you or me.”

That’s worth remembering. In the daily political posturing about closures and quarantine, masks and restrictions on the dance floor, what are our children hearing? And how do we help them?

Madonna King, a weekly columnist, is also the author of Ten-Ager, what your daughter needs to know bout the transition from child to teen

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