How your kindergarten child gets enough sleep
Solaine has been going to bed voluntarily in the evenings since she started nursery school. «She seems really grateful that she is finally allowed to sleep,» says her mum Natalie. Her six-year-old looks forward to going to kindergarten every morning, but is correspondingly exhausted when she gets home. She often doesn't want to do anything in the afternoon and is too tired for excursions: «Then she just wants to be at home and play.»
The mother of David, who is in his first year of nursery school, reports something similar. Her son sets off for school happily in the morning, but is often unbalanced in the second half of the day. «We used to usually have plans in the afternoon,» says David's mum, «now we decide spontaneously whether we want to do something.»
Why sleep is so important for children
When a child starts kindergarten, a lot of new things come their way: the teacher with whom they have to build a relationship, social experiences in the group, a changed rhythm, the new environment. All these impressions need to be processed - and that makes you tired. That's why restful sleep is particularly important. In the long term, sleep is the prerequisite for being able to connect with our environment during the day.
«The synapses, which are contact points between the nerve cells in our brain, form connections with each other as a result of the information we absorb. This makes them bigger and heavier,» says Reto Huber, a sleep researcher at the Children's Hospital Zurich and the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Zurich. «That's how learning works.»
Sleep resets the hard drive in the brain.
If this process ran continuously, our energy and space reserves, as well as our brain itself, would soon be exhausted. This is prevented by sleep - by minimising stimuli that cause the synapses to form new connections. According to Huber, deep sleep also synchronises certain areas of the brain, which causes the synapses to shrink again.
Put simply, sleep resets the brain's «hard drive», deletes unimportant information and ensures that it can be rewritten the next day. At the same time, it helps to consolidate what has been learnt. Deep sleep is characterised by slow waves, so-called slow-wave currents, says Huber. And: «Slow waves are particularly active in the region of the brain where a maturation process is taking place.»
Sleep needs vary from child to child
Sleep researchers at the Children's Hospital had children, adolescents and adults perform various visuomotor activities. These are tasks that require hand-eye coordination, such as writing or drawing. After the experiments, the researchers analysed the subjects' sleep - and found that deep sleep in the parietal cortex, which is responsible for the visual-motor control of movement, was increased in all participants.
In most cases, this is due to misjudgements of sleep behaviour or unfavourable sleeping habits. These behavioural disorders can usually be treated with a paediatric consultation.
The more complex the problem, the more important it is to take a step-by-step approach by rhythmising daily structures, adapting individual bedtimes to personal sleep needs and learning to fall asleep independently. Organic sleep disorders such as nocturnal breathing disorders or seizures must be distinguished from this.
Parents whose children have some form of difficulty sleeping should first consult their paediatrician. If this is not enough, parents can also contact specialist centres, such as the Interdisciplinary Centre for Sleep Medicine at the Children's Hospital Zurich.
- Zurich Children's Hospital:
- Sleep consultation: 044 266 77 75
- Further information at: www.kispi.uzh.ch
«In children,» says Huber, «it was even more pronounced compared to adults.» This is due to the high plasticity of children's brains - the ability of synapses, nerve cells and entire areas of the brain to change in their expression and function. This characteristic, to which children owe their extraordinary learning ability, is probably also responsible for their increased need for sleep compared to adults.
It is not possible to derive a universal formula from this, as sleep requirements vary from child to child, as studies by the Children's Hospital show. According to the study, five-year-olds need an average of 11.5 hours of sleep to be productive - some can manage on 9.5 hours, while others need 13 hours.
«Parents are not sufficiently aware of these differences,» says sleep researcher Huber. Many parents regard their child's sleep needs as a fixed quantity - and consequently insist on a certain amount of sleep. This is not helpful and can even favour sleep disorders: «It's more about developing a feeling for the child's individual sleep needs and creating the right conditions for this.»
The inner clock
The so-called internal clock, which is located in the diencephalon, controls our waking and sleeping phases. It is synchronised daily with regularly recurring environmental factors. «The most important of these is daylight,» says Huber. Who hasn't heard the children's evening lament that it is «still daytime» outside?
David's parents' efforts to put the kindergartener to bed at seven o'clock in the evening worked in winter - but as the days got longer, it was out of the question. «He was in bed at seven and still wide awake at nine,» says his mum. Waiting for sleep made the boy restless. So David goes to bed an hour later in summer. Nevertheless, his mum sticks to the rule that he eats at six and starts brushing his teeth at seven so that going to bed is stress-free.
The more consistent the sleep-wake times are, the better.
Sleep researcher Reto Huber
Fixed daily structures are important for a good night's sleep, says Reto Huber: «They are another timer that our internal clock adjusts to.» The more consistent the sleep-wake times are, the better. Ideally, this also applies to the weekend.
The sleep researcher believes that the approach of the mothers presented at the beginning of the text of not overloading their children with activities makes sense. «For a child's brain, activities are nothing more than learning,» he says, «and learning increases excitability.» Anyone who fears that sweet idleness will deny their child learning experiences should take comfort in the fact that our brain is not like a jug that keeps what you pour into it - more like a sieve that nothing sticks when it shoots through in turbo mode.
Five sleep tips for the kindergarten child:
- Fixed daily structures such as shared meals, a bedtime ritual and, in particular, regular bedtimes help your child to fall asleep more easily. Keep to the child's sleep-wake times as often as possible.
- It is important to create a calm atmosphere before going to bed. Avoid roughhousing in the evening and other activities that get the pulse racing and cause excitement.
- The bed should be a relaxation zone. It is not a place for gaming, playing games or doing homework.
- There is no such thing as normal sleeping behaviour. Every child is different. Try to develop a feeling for their individual sleep needs: Does your child fall asleep quickly and is hard to get out of bed in the morning? Then earlier bedtimes are probably necessary. Conversely, there is no point in sending your child to bed early on principle if this means that sleep is a long time coming.
- No punishment! Don't use early bedtimes as a punishment. Children should associate sleep with something good.
