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 as an umbrella protects you from rain, Professor Salome Kurth describes how healthy sleep protects your child under adverse circumstances: A ‘Sleep-Umbrella-Model’. Basically, healthy sleep, as described in Blog Posts 1–5, acts as a buffer to lessen the ill effects of circumstantial adversity, such as confinement due to COVID-19.
Her research on children 36-72 months, during Covid-19 confinement, showed that for some children, there were more night awakenings (possibly due to late bedtimes). For these children, she observed that the altered, or fragmented sleep, “specifically predicted outcomes of [decreased] inhibitory self-regulation 6 months later. Acute worsening of nighttime sleep [for example, fragmented sleep] during sensitive periods may thus interfere with maturational processes of cognition. This aligns with observations in animals that inducing poor sleep during developmental periods affects later brain function.” Children without altered sleep during COVI-19 confinement were protected and did not experience these adverse behavioral outcomes.
Also, Professor Kurth, in a separate study, observed that during confinement due to COVID-19, babies 0-35 months had later bedtimes.
Other studies, on different age groups, have also shown that during confinement for COVID-19, children had later bedtimes. Later bedtimes are associated with more night wakings (fragmented sleep), and shorter night sleep duration.
Additional reading about sleep and brain health:
Blog Post 11: Fragmented versus Consolidated Sleep
Blog Posts 50 and 51: Permanent Brain Damage?
Blog Posts 72 and 73: Brain Damage and Unhealthy Sleep
Bog Post 108: Does Impaired Sleep in Children Cause Mental Health Problems in Children?
Blog Post 123: Bedtime: A Review
Blog Posts 135 and 136: Brain Health: A Review
Blog Posts 148–151: Brain Damage and Brain Health
Blog Post 198: Understanding Sleep
