If you have not already done so, please read Blog Posts 1 through 5 that describe how sleep is important and beneficial. I will post specific information for parents and children based on my book, “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.” Please do not be put off by my book’s length. This is a reference book. Read only the topic of interest to you.
What is subjective blindness to one’ own sense of sleepiness?
Adults who are chronically experimentally sleep-deprived show the expected decreases in performance but many lacked subjective feelings of sleepiness. They lacked self-awareness about their own sleep loss.
When they do feel the effects of sleep loss, most adults say they feel “tired” which might imply previous effortful work (which might suggest high ‘productivity’ which society assigns a positive value) instead of saying that they feel “sleepy” which might imply low energy (which might suggest ‘laziness’ which society assigns a negative value).
If you say that you feel tired, then the solution is to rest.
If you say that you feel sleepy, then the solution is to get sleep.
For you child, early healthy sleep prevents subjective blindness to one’s own sleep loss.
Healthy sleep in children allows them to often feel optimally alert and at their personal best. They can compare this subjective alert state with peak performance to the subjective drowsy state with impaired performance when they are short on sleep. Children who grow up with unhealthy sleep and are chronically a little short on sleep lack this internal comparison and become subjectively blind to their own mild chronic sleepiness.
It is possible that some parents are so unaware of how impaired they are by their own sleep deprivation, that they are unable to appreciate the extent to which sleep deprivation is harming their child. I suspect that this explains why otherwise observant and loving parents (who are nevertheless short on sleep themselves) allow their child to become sleep-deprived, with all of its attendant problems. And if the children are too often mildly short on sleep, they themselves might not develop a strong sense of how different it feels to be completely well rested versus mildly sleepy. This subjective blindness to one’s own sleep deficit might continue as these chronically slightly sleepy children become adults, or it might be prevented by ensuring healthy sleep for your child.
Survey
I sent a survey to parents of preteens and teenagers whom I had cared for since birth and whom I knew had worked hard to help their young children sleep well. All the parents had two or more children, and the median age of the oldest child in each family was 17 years, while the youngest was 13 years.
I asked them whether or not there had been any carryover effect to the preteen and teenage years from the efforts that they had put forth in the early years to ensure healthy sleep in their children.
(to be continued)
