The Beauty of Sleep

In my list of suggested resolutions for our students in last week’s article, I mentioned the idea of getting more sleep as an important goal for our students. In our world today, as the pace of life has increased and the options that consume our attention have become more demanding, our children have made up for this by getting less and less sleep. This is having an adverse affect on them in many ways.

Here is some information taken from the Internet about sleep and its importance:

• A good deep sleep allows our body to release a significant amount of growth hormone that boosts the immune system and aids in the growth and repair of the body.
• Many studies have shown that sleep deprivation adversely affects performance and alertness. Reducing sleep by as little as one and a half hours for just one night reduces daytime alertness by about one-third.
• Sleep deprivation can impair memory and inhibit creativity, making it difficult for sleep-deprived students to learn. Teens struggle to learn to deal with stress and control emotion — sleep deprivation makes it even more difficult. Irritability, lack of self-confidence, and mood swings are often common in a teen, but sleep deprivation makes it worse. Depression can result from chronic sleep deprivation. Not enough sleep can endanger their immune system and make them more susceptible to serious illnesses.
• During the school year your child spends up to 8 hours a day involved in learning new skills, material, and instructional content. Without proper sleep, their ability to do that is reduced by up to 30%. Think about that — their ability to learn, what they are in school to do, is reduced by 30% when they do not get a good night’s sleep. It might not be easy, but I want to encourage parents to take the steps needed to make sure their children are getting the sleep they need throughout the semester.