Over the weekend I read an interesting book called Nurture Shock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. In it there are many studies about childhood including a segment about obesity.

The authors note that watching TV isn’t as much of an issue as we might think when it comes to obesity. Instead, it could be linked to sleep deprivation. Also that parents don’t do very well at guessing how many hours of sleep their kids actually get. We tend to underestimate it.

“Several scholars have tried to figure out how accurate parents are at accessing their children’s amount of sleep…parents frequently overestimate the time their kids are asleep by at least a half-an-hour — even as much as an hour and a half.”

How much are we off?

One report said in 1997 children age 3-5 years old were getting 10.8 hours of sleep at night. The National Sleep Foundation said 3-5 year olds in 2004 were getting 10.4 hours. Older kids were down to 9.5 hours. The data comes from all over the world saying that kids are not sleeping as much as they once did. Overall kids sleep about an hour less every day in 2010 than they did in 1997.

Lack of sleep contributes to ADD issues and emotional ups and downs. It affects how kids do in school. But here’s the startling data – scholars have found that getting less sleep in elementary school means they can predict the chance of the kids being obese by age 32. There seems to be a correlation. While not conclusive, there’s enough research to suggest it should be one of the possible things contributing to the problem.

So when recommending solutions to childhood obesity, we should remember to talk about eating healthy foods and exercise.  Another often overlooked recommendation is to get a full night of sleep – including putting children to bed on time and eliminating distractions. I know many parents who don’t give their kids bedtimes at all. (See http://www.webmd.com/parenting/guide/sleep-children)

WebMD gives a list of recommended hours of sleep by age. For a 3-6 year old it  is 10-12 hours per day. How much are your kids getting?

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