It’s 10:15
pm and my 2 1/2 –year-old is still awake, touching my mouse while I try to
type. She took a late nap and now we’re paying the consequences. A
few months ago the same thing happened and I did the unthinkable—I put her back
in her bed, with the iPad.
Total mom
fail—isn’t that against all the recommendations of all the academies of
everything medical?
I have my
excuses—I had worked the overnight shift the night before and neither my
husband nor I could keep our eyes open and we just couldn’t allow a
2-year-old to wander around the house unsupervised. I figured she would
fall asleep while watching Caillou and we’d find the iPad next to her bed in
the morning.
Wrong.
Here’s what really happened: around 3 am we were awakened by the sound of two
little feet running to our bedroom, and a little voice that said, “Caillou not
working!” She had been watching that iPad for three whole hours, and she
was wide awake.
I should
have known that iPads don’t put kids to bed—I’ve already read the research that
shows otherwise. A study of more than 2000 kids found that, on average,
kids spend about 30 minutes watching screens in the 90 minutes before they go
to bed. Kids who had more screen time before bed took longer to fall
asleep. This was true for kids of all ages—toddlers through teens.
Why do kids
who watch TV before bed have trouble falling asleep? We’re not quite
sure, but a leading hypothesis has to do with melatonin. Melatonin is a
natural hormone produced by your body that causes sleepiness. When your
body’s natural clock is working right, you (and your child) get a burst of
melatonin about 30 minutes before you fall asleep. It’s that “I feel
really sleepy” feeling that you get around bedtime. You can choose to
fight through it or give in to sweet sleep and close your eyes. This
melatonin burst is triggered by darkness, or a dimming of light. External
light, including that glow from your favorite screen, can prevent melatonin
release. For more on this topic, see my article, “Kids, Sleep and
Melatonin.”
This is bad
news for those of us who love to give our kids screen time that
is good for them. And there are times when it really is
okay to let your toddler play with your iPad. But bedtime is
not time for interactive stories in HD, despite the multitude of “bedtime
stories” available in the app store, or the movies on Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Later
bedtimes don’t just make sleepy kids. Kids who don’t get enough
sleep suffer
academically in school, and are more likely to struggle
socially. Tired kids are also at higher risk for a host of medical
problems from injuries to obesity. So stick to your old
fashioned bedtime story books, and put away the screens before bed. Your
children will go to sleep faster. And earlier bedtimes for kids usually
means earlier bedtimes for parents . . .
