3 reasons why sleep is so important for children

Did you know that sleep deprivation affects learning, IQ, and behavior?

The affect of sleep on learning - this is such an important reason to reduce the noise and visual distractions at nap-time and bedtime for everyone, whether learning-disabled, bipolar, or normal. Turn off the radio, turn off the TV - noise really hampers a child's sleep and brain development.

Sleep is extremely important for bipolar children, especially in stabilizing mood swings and rages.

On the Audiblox website, http://www.audiblox2000.com/sleep-deprivation.htm, a multi-sensory brain-training program that claims to be effective for dyslexia and other learning disabilities, I found an interesting article about the affect of sleep on learning. To quote:

“To achieve optimum performance, people [and children] need good quality sleep. Impaired sleep reduces performance on many mental tasks. Mitler’s studies of catastrophes, such as the Three Mile Island nuclear power accident and the Challenger space shuttle explosion, concluded that poor sleep quality impaired decision making and contributed to each catastrophe.

“According to Coren, scores on intelligence tests decline cumulatively on each successive day that you sleep less than you normally sleep. The daily decline is approximately one IQ point for the first hour of sleep loss, two for the next, and four for the next. After five successive days of sleeping less than you need, your IQ can be lowered by up to 15 points. This means that a person of normal intelligence could have an effective IQ of only 85, the level at which you would need special education in order to learn. Even a very ‘bright’ person (IQ of 120 plus) can be reduced to robotic thinking, as though on automatic pilot.

“Research has also revealed an association between sleep deprivation and poorer grades. In a 1998 survey of more than 3,000 high school students, for example, psychologists Amy R. Wolfson, PhD, of the College of the Holy Cross, and Mary A. Carskadon, PhD, of Brown University Medical School, found that students who reported that they were getting C’s, D’s, and F’s in school obtained about 25 minutes less sleep and went to bed about 40 minutes later than students who reported they were getting A’s and B’s.”

The affect of sleep on learning. Enough said.

http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/SavingJackJill3reasonswhysleepissoimportantforchildren