Extended Sleep at Night Beneficial for School Children

Getting extra time to sleep can be beneficial for children, both for improving their behavior and studies, a new study says.

Reut Gruber and colleagues included 34 elementary school children aged between seven and 11 for examining the impact of sleep on behavior. All the participants were healthy, and without any sleep, behavior or academic problems.

Of the total participants, half were put to sleep about 27 minutes before their normal bedtime for one week.  Details about the children's behavior at the school, before and after the changes in the sleep pattern, were taken from their teachers.

According to National Sleep Foundation, children aged five to 12 require at least 10 to14 hours sleep in a day.

Teachers reported remarkable changes in behavior and ability to cope up with every day challenges in children who slept extra hours.

"Extending sleep opens the door to an effective, feasible way to improve children's health and performance,"  CNN quoted study author Gruber, director of the Attention Behavior and Sleep Lab at the Douglas Research Center in Quebec, Canada, as saying.

On the other hand, poor sleep was found making children exhausted, reckless, irritable and were more likely to cry, lose control of their emotions and become frustrated and angry, easily.

"Small changes in bedtime and daily routine could go a long way," researcher Gruber told CBS 47. "One more video game and staying a little longer in a friend's house ... could add up and have a negative impact on the daytime functioning of healthy children."

Findings of the study have been published in the November issue of Pediatrics.

Following are some tips from the researchers to solve sleep related problems of children, provided by CBS 47:

* Give prime importance to sleep in routine

* Keep a fixed time for retiring to bed at night and waking up in the morning

* Avoid having heavy meals before bedtime

* Avoid day naps

* Following a healthy lifestyle- ensure enough physical activity through regular exercise

* Finish all homework and school work early

* Build up a steady and early bedtime routine