Although it's somewhat counterintuitive, new parents are told (and eventually come to experience and believe) that an overtired baby or infant won't sleep well. We can't tell you how many times we've told our mother that keeping our son up late doesn't mean he will sleep longer (in fact the opposite is true) even if it seems logical. Similarly, it also seems like a no-brainer that the more physical activity a kid gets during the day the better he or she will sleep. Researchers put this "truism" to a test...
Researchers found it is true that more active children sleep better. They studied over 500 7-year olds who wore devices called actigraphs which measure movement and found that more physical activity resulted in kids falling asleep more quickly. And they next found a correlate between how long it took to fall asleep and how long a child would sleep - an extra hour of sleep for every 11 minute drop in the length of time it took to fall asleep.
The study was done in New Zealand and published in Archives of Disease in Childhood. What? Your subscription ran out? You can find a summary here. We'd like to see this study done with younger children as well since we haven't seen consistently longer sleep from our son on days when he has more playground time.
(photo by Carrie McBride)
seems like a huge duh! nice to have the validation though. most are stunned when they hear that my almost-6-yr-old daughter sleeps a hard 11-12 hours still. she plays pretty hard all day.
view aneelee's profile
Sleep begets more sleep - that's always the advice I give when first time moms ask for it. (That, and the standard - what works for one baby may or may not work for yours, so go with your gut.) I've never noticed a difference in how hard my kids played and how much sleep they got that night. But, they fall into that younger category, too.
Aneelee, my 5 y.o. sleeps for 12 hours, too.
view Fire Wife Katie's profile
I, 28, sleeps for 12 hours too. Or I would, if I could.
view Sol's profile