Response from last week's article on improving children's nutrition was so strong that I decided to include more information about children's health in this issue.
As I have said many times, optimal health is dependent upon consuming a great diet, exercise, controlling and reducing stress and adequate rest and sleep. If your child is unhealthy, cleaning up the diet is a good place to start, but there are other things you should pay attention to as well.
One of the terrible health hazards our society is promoting today is sleep deprivation and lack of free time for children. Kids often get up before 6:00AM, go to school, and then participate in sports and several other extracurricular activities. They sometimes don't start homework until the middle of the evening and are up until 11:00 or 12:00 completing it, resulting in only a few hours of sleep before the cycle starts again. This all appears to be a great idea - many parents believe that kids who are busy stay out of trouble, and that high-achieving kids who get great grades are headed for a great life. There is some truth to these ideas, but there are other considerations too.
First, if the only thing preventing your child from getting into trouble is perpetual motion and over-activity, you have a serious problem. Remember that sooner or later your child will leave home, this over-scheduling will come to an end, and his or her judgment will be most important. And, although there is some merit to grooming a high achiever with a great grade point average, over-emphasis on achievement can be detrimental to healthy development.
The reality is that teenagers suffer from low self-esteem and more depression when they don't get enough sleep. A study conducted at the University of Massachusetts by Jean Rhodes, Ph.D., looked at 2259 middle school students and was published in the Jan/Feb 2004 issue of Child Development. The study concluded that decreases in sleep result in more depression and less self-esteem, while increases in sleep reverse the trend.
According to Dr. Richard Simon, Medical Director of the Sleep Disorder Clinic at St. Mary Medical Center in Walla Walla, Washington, "Healthy kids are energetic, optimistic, and wonderful to be around when well-rested. If you take the same kids and sleep-deprive them... Mood becomes sour, optimism declines, depression increases... Throw in all the other problems teens deal with. Now you have a recipe for disaster."
Dr. Simon says sleep research shows that teens need more sleep than younger children - at least 8 1/2 hours per day. However, Dr. Rhodes' study shows that kids actually get much less sleep and that the amount of sleep declines as they move through middle school.
Another negative by-product of these kids being so busy is that the parents are killing themselves trying to keep up. In addition to working full time and maintaining a household, they are driving all over the state to watch numerous athletic events, and chauffering these kids to a variety of lessons and other activities on a daily basis. I have seen this destroy the health of the parents and strain marriages that were healthy before the insanity began. And, it often destroys family life - dinners together and other family activities get pushed aside while family members run from activity to activity 6 or 7 days per week.
I tell at least one parent every week to start by figuring out what level of activity is realistic in the household based on the number of family members, commitments of the parents and other factors. In a family of 5 children it may not be feasible for each kid to participate in 4 activities. Discussion with the kids should follow that involve reigning in the amount of activity and insuring the right amount of sleep every night, and allowing for some "down time" to just "be." The kids can choose which activities to keep and which will go, but there is nothing wrong with this approach.
When parents tell me that their children are not going to want to give up some of these activities, my response is that they don't want to do a lot of things you insist that they do. Remember that you're the parent and it's your responsibility to do what's right!
Assessing and then making adjustments in your family's commitments and activity levels will not only help your children, but it will help you, the parent, as well. You'll be more rested, you'll perhaps find some time to exercise, your mood will improve and you may find that child rearing is actually more fun than you used to think it was. If you're married or have a significant other, you may be able to invest more energy in that relationship and let your children observe, through your example, how a healthy intimate relationship functions.
Balance is a wonderful objective in all areas of life, but it requires a deliberate effort to achieve. And, teaching your children about balance is a wonderful gift to them!
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