Misbehavior May Be a Sign of Inadequate Sleep

One of the ways to "enforce a more stable sleep schedule" for your children is to establish bedtime rituals. I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but I'll say it anyway - read to your kids! Reading a bedtime story (or three) at the end of the day might be the last thing your tired eyes feel like doing, but it does wonders for your child's development. It may also get them in the habit of reading before bed, which is a lot healthier than watching TV (as doctors routinely tell insomniacs).

When I was younger I got kicked in the head and never got to sleep much.

Plus people tried to beat me up, or beat my brother or sisters up, and I had to fight a lot.

It has been reported that people need sleep.

What drugs are recommended?

Misbehavior may be a sign of insufficient butt smacking. The son of that idiotic doctor who stated that physical punishment causes personality problems comitted suicide.

Jaxy,

The message was quite useful to spare the children's society ,from greedy hard driving pressure of well wishing[so called]parenthood.

*Animal kids enjoy free play and natural grooming and sustain a life of reality.

*Many parents hard press children to over perform or compare someone and state 'you got to be like him'.We want our children to accomplish ,what we could not do.Is it anyway fair?.Particularly I was so moved by seeing a father deliberately taking his daughter[ aged 3years doing pre K.G ]for a evening tution for 3hours.What the poor girl can think of relaxtion.We can teach our children to be responsible, to learn and be effective for their survival.Too much of expectations and restricting their natural life style,likely to spoil their psychological freedom and make them loose sleep.mental agony and all consequent misbehavours to the extent of hatredness to compelling parenthood.It may permanently spoil the child to parent concern ,which is practically true.Your posting is an act of time.

I have heard of other studies that say that it is not so much how, as when children get to sleep.

Inadequate Sleep may well have as much to do with "when" and under what conditions, as it does with how many gross hours of sleep are achieved.

As human beings in different stages of life, we note different desires for sleep.

Certainly in the US you have to wonder if some of these children have sleeping problems because they simply don't run around playing outside enough to be tired enough to sleep well.

I see these ads for sleep aids on the TV, and myself wonder why so many people seem to think there is something pathologically wrong with them, if they wake up in the night for awhile?

I have a friend whose children, as well as himself would wander around in the big house with sleeping bags, and sleep whenever and wherever they felt like.

It was fun for me to visit with them, partly for this sort of way.

All the children are doing well.

Now all of them are in their 20s, and I've known them all their lives, and before.

As far as "misbehaving", I know that I "misbehaved" when I was attacked, and threatened and felt forced to defend myself, or my brother and sisters.

As a parent, I do try hard to at a base level make sure my daughter knows I am on her side.

I don't know how things go in the schools these days, but I remember when I was in Kindergarten I, and the rest of us all had "nap rugs", and took naps at about 10:30 am.

We may have taken naps later in the afternoon, but that was 50 some years ago for me.

Certainly the modern way of schooling influenced by the industrial revolution, and ridged schedules for every sort of work, defined, and demanded to be conformed to with clocks and schools replicating the "factory", influence the way we think of sleep.

As a "monitoring" I would suggest to parents that they ask their children what they dreamed about, and encourage the sweet dreams, and comfort for the nightmares.

Interesting.... as an adult, It's my misbehaviors that are the cause of my lack of sleep.

err,,,,the study was in Finland - daylight hours are a bit different to most places !

"The objective of our study was to evaluate whether short sleep is associated with behavioral symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in 7- to 8-year-old children. ^"

So there's an association. That's hardly news to any parent. The study doesn't seem to indicate how they decided whether chicken or egg was first. Apart from daylight hours being a direct problem, many other factors could influence this study.

There's a valid discussion to be had about behaviour and sleep, but this study doesn't seem to be a good starting point.

Every good journey has to start somewhere. This is just to get the ball rolling.

That's cool, I just get irked by the zillions of half-baked reports that get published every day. The fact that the original link also includes reference to America and ADHD (if such a thing exists), further muddies their waters. That's a lot of **** for a buch of PhD's. 'Must get another paper published' was probably the main motivator.

So far, I like the post by moose about reading to kids. In general, I'd put a lot of sleep/behaviour issues down to the frenetic electronic age we live in (though in another blog somewhere, moose had also mentioned an excellent electronic reading aid for kiddies).

We have an 'I want it now' society, and family life isn't what it used to be. Even the way families eat together has changed beyond all recognition, in part because family structure has changed. Add to that fizzy sugary drinks, and a host of other stuff, and it's amazing kids sleep at all ! The format of TV programmes reflect all this ; at one time a camera would be trained on one scene for what seemed like ages, but now it swaps every few seconds. OK, they have more cameras in a studio now, but which is leading which - does change of camera match peoples attention span, or the other way around, with directors meeting the needs of short attention span. Then again, is it the multitude of advertisers who want to shove their sound-bite down our neck. All these 'minor' details add up to a lifestyle not conducive to good sleep/behaviour patterns.

Whichever way you slice it, sleep and behavioural problems are probably less prevalent in places without technology. It's no coincidence that people with mental health problems are often set to simple physical tasks like gardening/basket weaving/whatever. At one extreme, humans have the physical risks associated with a 'basic' existence, at the other they have the mental health problems caused by too many distractions and choices. To put it more generally, we can develop new 'toys' quicker than we can learn to play with them sensibly.

I don't know the answer to the original point, but 'quiet time' is no bad thing for adults and children alike. Setting aside time for undisturbed, relaxed, activity is the best general solution to sleep and behaviour problems. Also 'focussed' time, in that it's time spent without multiple distractions. Kids with behaviour problems often cope better if their life is sructured into manageable chunks. The same process of cutting down brain activity helps the brain relax for sleep. Even if done in the middle of the day, calm activity can have a cummulative effect on peoples general ability to relax.

Kids today were born into the media/communication frenzy. Most people here probably became accustomed to the world before anybody had a computer on a desktop. The 21st century is the equivalent of a child being born in fairground, then wondering why it's startled and crying. If you can't get out, get some ear plugs and snuggle down in the teacups with it for a while.

All will be well, here cometh the Sandman.

I stay up all night looking for good threads and this is the best you can come up with?

Apparently you need a bit more sleep seeing as this is a blog... not a thread

If you want to know how to sleep, imitate cats.

Cats know how to sleep.

I agree on that one too. The other very important thing is Location wherever out of the city since with so much Horns-Loud 'Musics'-Screamings-Sirens-Etc. is against the odds for whoever lived in a city these days, is nuts. Many people at cities have their internal clock mess-up and they start activities by midnite as their norm, So who with an early morning (5 or 6am) schedule will survive such situation? I don't Know!!!

Within a nice pretty fair location in the suburs, then should be no much of the problem but in the city forget it everyone would flunk on this study, I'll Bet! Allset nice nite all now and where is my earplugs now??? AAAAoooHHHuuuuhhmmmnnnnnn??

Ambien & Panadol (Pm) Time,

MC