The Reasons Your Kid Needs Sleep

The Reasons Your Kid Needs Sleep

Getting your kid to bed early has more benefits than just a few hours of quiet time at night. New research explains how vitamin ZZZ may help children fight obesity, avoid colds, and succeed in school.

Sleep promotes growth.

You've probably had mornings where you've sworn your baby got bigger overnight, and you'd be right. "Growth hormone is primarily secreted during deep sleep," says Judith Owens, M.D., director of sleep medicine at Children's National Medical Center, in Washington, D.C., and a Parents advisor. Mother Nature seems to have protected babies by making sure they spend about 50 percent of their time in this deep sleep, considered to be essential for adequate growth. Italian researchers, studying children with deficient levels of growth hormone, have found that they sleep less deeply than average children do.

Sleep helps beat germs.

During sleep, children (and adults) also produce proteins known as cytokines, which the body relies on to fight infection, illness, and stress. (Besides battling illness, they also make us sleepy, which explains why having the flu or a cold feels so exhausting. It forces us to rest, which further aids the body's ability to heal.) Too little sleep appears to impact the number of cytokines on hand. And it's been found that adults who sleep fewer than seven hours per night are almost three times more likely to develop a cold when exposed to that virus than those who sleep eight or more hours. While there's little data on young children, studies of teens have found that reported bouts of illness declined with longer nightly sleep。

sleep reduces injury risk.

Kids are clumsier and more impulsive when they don't get enough sleep, setting them up for accidents.

Sleep boosts learning.

A baby may look peaceful when he's sleeping, but his brain is busy all night long.