Other
Sleep in children
David Gozal, Leila Kheirandish-Gozal ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This short text argues that the effects of poor sleep on developing children are underrated and have been little studied. It says that the amount of sleep children need at different ages is still largely undefined. It notes that sleep, thinking, mood and health affect one another in several directions. It suggests that healthcare providers take a careful sleep history and use objective sleep measures, covering five sleep variables. It calls for more research into how healthy and insufficient sleep affect children's thinking, emotions and health.
Key points
- The impact of poor sleep on the developing child is underrated and largely unexplored.
- Normative, age-appropriate sleep needs during development remain largely undefined.
- Relations between sleep duration and cognition, affect and health are multi-directional.
- The most consistent result of insufficient or disrupted sleep is increased daytime sleepiness.
- Sleep assessment should cover bedtime, rise time, total sleep duration, variability of sleep over time, and alignment with other circadian factors.
Limitations
Only a short abstract is available, with no data, methods, study population or country context. It is not an evaluation of an intervention and cannot tell us what works or how large any effects are.
Abstract
The impact of poor sleep in the developing child is still tremendously underrated and virtually unexplored. The normative, age-appropriate sleep needs during development remain undefined to a large extent. Furthermore, it remains crucial to realize that relations between sleep duration and cognition, effect, and health are all multi-directional. The most consistent result of insufficient or disrupted sleep is increased daytime somnolence. Thorough sleep history-taking by the healthcare provider and the use of objective sleep assessments are potential first steps and should include the five sleep variables (bedtime, rise time, total sleep duration, variability of sleep over time, and alignment of sleep with other circadian factors). We need to explore the beneficial effects of healthy sleep and how disrupted, shortened, or insufficient sleep may adversely impact on our children’s cognitive and affective functioning, may compromise their health, and may therefore impose a heavy price on our socio-economic structure.