Most of us know how important naptime is for our kids. It isn’t just the time of the day when we, as parents, get a little peace and quiet. It’s not just a time for our babies to rest and reenergize. A new study out of the University of Colorado shows that napping helps kid deal with everyday stress. They studied the “cortisol awakening response, a burst of hormone secretion known to take place shortly after morning awakening.”
Children produce this response after short naps in the morning and afternoon, though not in the evening, and it may be adaptive in helping children respond to the stresses of the day.
By experimentally restricting sleep in young children, and then analyzing their behavior in putting puzzles together, Dr. LeBourgeois’ group also is quantifying how napping – or the lack of it – affects the ways that children respond to situations. “Sleepy children are not able to cope with day-to-day challenges in their worlds,” she said. When children skip even a single nap, “We get less positivity, more negativity and decreased cognitive engagement.”
Have you ever noticed that babies and some toddlers can sleep through anything? My babies would sleep in the sling while I was walking around an outdoor market. As infants, they can’t deal with high stress, so most of the time, they just go to sleep. When children age, they begin to take fewer and shorter naps and it eventually, naptime is eliminated.
This study proves what most moms can tell you, kids are more calm and happier when they’ve had a nap. There are no defenitive answers on when kids should stop napping, how long their naps should be, etc. The bottom line is that parents need to be in tune with their kids in order to assure they nap enough.
I was one of those parents who scheduled life around my children’s sleep habits. I made it a point to schedule appointments before or after their mid-day nap time. We worked to have an earlier bedtime when I saw they were ready to stop taking naps during the day. I can still tell when my boys need to sleep. They are 8 and 5 and sometimes I know they just need to rest.
Do your kids have regularly scheduled naps? When did you know they no longer needed a nap?
