What are the dangers of children not getting enough sleep?

Recently, the \”2019 China Adolescent and Children\’s Sleep Index White Paper Released\” big data survey of adolescents and children aged 6 to 17 years old showed that 62.9% of those who slept less than 8 hours reached 81.2% of those aged 13 to 17 years old. Lack of sleep has become a norm for Chinese students, and this sub-healthy state will last throughout the child\’s entire development period. Linlin, the daughter of the seed mother, is 7 years old and in the second grade of primary school. I basically go to bed around 11 o\’clock every night and get up at 6:30 in the morning. It is common to get dressed, brush my teeth and take a nap. Simply looking at the amount of homework, it is indeed not that much. It can be completed in basically two hours if you concentrate, but sometimes it can take more than four hours if you just dawdle. I was worried that my children would not be able to keep up, so I had to take extra tutoring classes in advance for each subject. Artificial intelligence has become very popular in recent years. I was worried that she would not be able to catch up with this \”new era\” train, so I signed up for a programming class. In order to help my daughter have a good figure in the future, I also asked her to learn dance… Looking at the full course schedule , I am very pleased with my daughter’s fulfilling life. When I come back from school every day, my child’s face is full of fatigue. While I cheered her on, I imagined the scene when my daughter would grow up and express her gratitude to me. So she became more motivated and often communicated with other mothers to see what other interest classes might be helpful to her. It wasn\’t until recently that I noticed that my daughter had a poor appetite and often forgot to bring things. One night when I was having dinner at home, I fainted. I was so scared. When we arrived at the hospital, the doctor made it clear: There is nothing serious at the moment, it’s just excessive fatigue. Pay attention to the quality of your sleep. If this continues, it will cause different symptoms. Only then did I realize that I was only focused on running forward with my daughter, but I forgot to take my health with me. Some time ago, the sleep schedule of American children went viral on WeChat Moments. For children aged 5 to 12 years old, sleep must be guaranteed to be at least 10 to 11 hours. This amount is simply an \”astronomical number\” for Chinese children. Many mothers around me said, \”I can\’t do it.\” On the one hand, they want to develop their \”moral, intellectual, physical, artistic, and physical\” comprehensive development, and on the other hand, they have to make comprehensive preparations for various exams. How can they go to bed early? It has to be said that this generation of parents born in the 1980s and 1990s do pay more attention to their children\’s education than the previous generation. They are deeply embedded in society, feel unprecedented pressure, and devote all their expectations and life-long energy to their children. The weekend courses of Linlin\’s classmates are basically full. Even if she gets home at 6pm, according to the sleep standards, how can she finish all the homework in the interest class in two or three hours? Some students have to go to class the next day, and the teacher has to check, otherwise they will not be able to keep up, and it is inevitable that they will go to bed late. During the winter and summer vacations, the son of Seed’s mother’s best friend has already completed tutoring for all three subjects in the second semester. Can he keep up with this pace? If you follow, you risk your child\’s sleep; if you don\’t follow, the pressure of starting school will be high, and your grades will probably plummet! Faced with such a dilemma, many parents are like the seed mothers, with nowhere to rest their anxious hearts. However, there is one fact that we have to admit: for children in the growing stage, the harm of going to bed late is far greater than we imagine! Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Jeffrey Hall, MaiA study by three experts, Kerr Rosbash and Michael Young, found that lack of sleep can break the body\’s circadian rhythm, lead to various diseases, and can also cause children\’s academic performance to stagnate or even decline rapidly. As a parent, you must not ignore the following four major influences! 1. Impact on the brain: Brain development is a slow process. The hippocampus is an important structure for consolidating brain memory. Lack of sleep will damage the plasticity of hippocampal nerves, eventually leading to memory decline. The prefrontal lobe of the brain is an important brain area responsible for judgment, analysis, and thinking. Lack of sleep can also cause problems such as slow thinking and decreased self-control in children. The prefrontal lobe is not fully developed until the age of 25. If you don\’t get enough sleep for a long time, the damage to your brain will be irreversible. 2. Impact on endocrine and metabolic functions Lack of sleep can cause increased cortisol secretion, which in turn can increase the incidence of hypertension and cognitive impairment. Cortisol is used to regulate the physiological mechanism of people under stress. Moderate use can improve short-term memory and help the liver remove toxins. Long-term accumulation is harmful to the body and reduces immune response. In recent years, hypertension has gradually become younger and younger. Lack of sleep can also affect the secretion of growth hormone in children. Because when people are awake, growth hormone is secreted very little. Growth hormone begins to be secreted around 10 o\’clock in the evening, and the secretion reaches its peak during sleep. If you stay up late, growth hormone will be suppressed. Growth hormone can promote cell division and proliferation and protein synthesis, promote the growth and development of bones and muscles, and regulate substance metabolism in the body. If it is lacking, it will affect height. 3. The hidden danger of mental illness. According to research by the American Psychological Association, the new generation who grew up with the Internet are more likely to suffer from mental illness. 60% of children suffer from depression and 80% of children suffer from anxiety. In severe cases, severe symptoms may occur. Depression and suicidality. Heavy use of electronic products is one of the important reasons why children go to bed late. Researchers from the University of London formed a research team to study the long-term effects of childhood sleep deprivation on mood. They collected sleep data from 2,076 adolescents aged 4 to 6 years old in the Netherlands. A few years later, they were asked about various emotional and behavioral traits. Studies have found that people who don\’t get enough sleep in childhood are more likely to develop anxiety, depression and aggressive behavior as adults. Long-term sleep deprivation and excessive accumulation of emotional interference in children will disrupt the functions of the amygdala and prefrontal cortex of the brain, thereby affecting emotional response and regulation, such as attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, emotion regulation disorder, etc. 4. It can cause obesity. Harvard Medical School conducted a study on 915 children in Massachusetts and found that: in the first two years of life, children who sleep less than 12 hours a day are twice as likely to be overweight by the age of 3 as children who get enough sleep. . Lack of sleep can lead to changes in appetite regulation and increased food intake. In 2004, Chinese scholars conducted a 10-year clinical follow-up on 4,500 children and adolescents aged 6 to 18 years old in Beijing. It was found that sleep deprivation can cause changes in leptin levels in the body, thereby affecting childhood obesity. These influences are crucial to children, and each child’s physical fitness is different.All the same, some children will experience discomfort in the early stages, while others may appear to be fine on the surface, but over time, bigger problems will be revealed. As parents, we all have a misunderstanding that children who sleep late and spend more time will become better. This kind of \”self-depleting\” effort will make children\’s minds slower and slower. Children\’s growth also requires a step-by-step process. If you get involved in certain fields too early instead of relying on your children\’s interests to drive them, it can easily cause permanent rejection in your children. A colleague of mine encountered exactly this situation. Her son was in the third grade of elementary school and enrolled in an introductory physics class during the winter vacation. After hearing her show off, we were all surprised. Physics can only be learned in junior high school, right? My colleague has a very good reason. He knows that physics is difficult to learn. Let the stupid bird fly first, and then he will be one step ahead. As a result, she could be heard complaining every day that it took her child an hour to solve a physics problem and she couldn\’t understand the reason. She often calls her children stupid in person, always compares them with outstanding children in the same class, and often goes to bed late and has quarrels. In the end, my colleague\’s son tried his best to skip class every day, crying and shouting that he never wanted to see physics as a subject! Most of the pressure on Chinese children comes from their parents\’ anxiety. When a child\’s mental development has not yet reached parents\’ expectations, we need to tailor a learning plan based on the child\’s own situation, and remember not to blindly follow the trend. We have believed in the saying \”a strict teacher will make a good disciple\” since childhood, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. The key is our deep misunderstanding of \”strictness\”. \”Strictness\” does not mean violating the child\’s growth rules, nor does it mean \”abusive growth.\” Strictness must be done in a right way, and more efforts should be made on children\’s learning efficiency and self-discipline habits. I remember seeing a strange news a few days ago. A mother threw her child at a highway intersection because he did not score 95 points in the exam. The police contacted the boy\’s mother to persuade her. The mother actually said that she would not want him even if she was put in jail! It’s really unreasonable to do this without caring about the impact on the child’s psychology for the sake of academic performance! While writing this article, Zedong’s mother was also constantly reflecting: A child’s learning and growth is a marathon, not a sprint. Ignoring the physical and mental health of the child for the sake of beautiful numbers on the report card is really considered a success. What? You can slowly understand and digest the math questions you don\’t know, and you can spend a little more time on the ancient poems you haven\’t memorized. But once there is a problem with your body and mind, is there still a chance to make up for it? We love our children with all our heart, and we also know the importance of \”promoting from primary school to junior high school\”, \”high school entrance examination\” and \”college entrance examination\” to the future of our children. However, if you go too fast and too hard, not only will you not be able to \”overtake in a corner\”, but it will also be easier. Loss of balance and \”overturning\”. Remember: \”There are thousands of things to study, but health is the first. If you don\’t get enough sleep, your loved ones will shed tears.\”