Four/Five year old bedtime - sleep

gcgirl

miss no stars wrote: »

I was watching Jo Frost's extreme parental guidance. She's been doing sorta experiments with certain topics like sugar and sleep as well as helping parents who've lost control of the kids.

Anyway, in the last one it was sleep that was up for debate. Think the kids were aged around about 9 this week and for the first week of the experiment they got to go to bed as late as they wanted up until 11pm at the latest but had to get up at 7, meaning they were only getting 8 hours sleep per night. Their average mental age had reduced to 7 by the end of the week. The second week they had to go to bed at 1930, read for half an hour (ALL electronics banished from their rooms!) and then lights out by 8pm, meaning they were getting 11 hours sleep (instead of the recommended 10). At the end of the week the average mental age had raised to 12.

It'd be interesting to see that sorta study done on a much larger scale and see if the results correlate. Kinda shocking the difference it makes. Perhaps the recommended 10 hours actually isn't enough if that kinda improvement can be seen in only one week by just one extra hour per night! (and probably improved sleep due to absence of stimulating electronics)

I know as a kid until I was maybe 9 or 10 I was always in bed by 1930 and it was only when I got to around 11ish that bedtime got to 9pm. I can't get over little kids that don't go to bed til after 9!

Seriously i would have to get the UN in to do peace keeping if i took anything out of their rooms!

Nevyn

You shouldn't be afraid of the reactions of your kids, if they throw a tantrum then let them,
you can't be held hostage by them or they will use it to get thier way and you are not the parent as you are not in charge.