Kids Sleeping Tips: Quality Sleep for Toddlers

You state that, "By the way they act in the morning, clearly they need and want more sleep" but you do not describe how they act. What happens when there is not enough quality sleep? These are serious issues so read the list twice:

• Exhaustion. And we all know what that feels like!
• Impaired mood. Children become more irritable, angry, and easily upset; later on, junk sleep can cause or exacerbate depression in adolescents.
• Impaired social and academic performance. Kids who are lacking sleep will be more hyperactive, oppositional, and aggressive.
• Impaired cognitive development. Sleep incorporates learning into permanent memory, causes memory consolidation, and enhances organizational skills, planning, multitasking, and executive functioning.
• Impaired personality. Children become fussy, more intense, more frightened, and less adaptable.
• Impaired hand—eye coordination. Which impacts a whole host of functions, such as athletic performance and fine motor skills.
• Systemic inflammation, increased blood pressure and increased stress hormones.
• Impaired glucose control. Which is a factor in diabetes and obesity.
• Depression in the mother.

If you sense that your kids need more sleep, trust your observations and try to figure out how this came about. Watch for drowsy signals at night and put them to sleep before they get a second wind. If you do not see drowsy signals, your default position is an Earlier Bedtime in order to get more net night sleep. Keep a sleep log to help synchronize the kids sleeping schedule.