Blog Posts 1–5, based on the United States of America Department of the Army Field Manual: Holistic Healing and Fitness, describe what really matters for your child’s sleep. If sleep is an important enough topic for national defense than surely sleep should be considered a serious topic for parenting!
Just move the bedtime early. How simple is that!
A healthy child needs a healthy brain. A healthy brain needs healthy sleep. Emotional health, mental health (Blog Posts 99, 100 and 108), and cognition are strengthened with healthy sleep. But what exactly is cognition?
Cognition is the mental actions or processes that underlie all forms of knowing and awareness such as:
In 1925, The co-inventor of the IQ (Intelligence Quotient) test, discovered that children with IQs over 140 (the genius level) had longer sleep durations (based on parent’s reports) than those with lower IQs, for every age.
A 2018 paper, for children 5-13 years, titled ‘Cognition and objectively measured sleep duration in children’, concluded: “A significant effect was found between sleep duration and cognition, suggesting that longer sleep durations were associated with better cognitive function [based on objective measurements of sleep duration].”
A 2021 review paper titled ‘Sleep and human cognitive development’ documented “an interrelation between brain development, sleep, and cognition” and highlighted the important role of sleep spindles and REM sleep (Blog Post 112).
A 2022 paper, titled ‘Association between sleep duration and Intelligence Quotient in 6-year-old children concluded: “The results of this study support an association between longer sleep duration and increased IQ scores.”
A 2023 paper, titled, ‘Trajectories of reported sleep duration associate with early child cognitive development’ studied children at 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, and 54 months concluded: “Longer and more consistent night- and total sleep and short day sleep in early child hood is associated with better cognition.” For these children with better cognition, at each age, the children in the ‘long consistent’ sleep group had night sleep durations of about 10 hours and day sleep duration of about 2 hours. The differences in cognition at 54 months were largely driven by differences in sleep patterns in the first 24 months.
My interpretation:
Although the bedtime was not included in this study, I believe, and other studies support this belief, that children with early bedtimes have longer night sleep durations that causes them to be less sleepy during the day which results in shorter naps compared to children with bedtimes that are too late. Total sleep duration is greater with early bedtimes, because in this situation the greater amount of extra night sleep is more than the less amount of day sleep. Additionally, the earlier timing of sleep onset in phase with the circadian sleep rhythm produces better quality sleep. For more information on the importance of an early bedtime, see Blog Posts 123, 162 and 174.
Remember, the brain is the only organ in the body that has sleep as a requirement. Smart children have long sleep. Long sleep comes from an early bedtime (Blog Posts 7, 74, and 109). Even just a few minutes of extra sleep makes a big difference (Blog Post 6)!
