Kids and Sleep

“Sally doesn’t have to go to bed at eight o’clock. Let me watch one more show!”
“My three-year-old wakes up at night and sees scary monsters!”
“My newborn has day and night reversed”

The trip from womb to world is the longest, most traumatic journey a human will ever take. One result is to send newborns into months of what is much like severe jet lag. Their first sleeping patterns are nearly random. They need to learn night from day and adjust sleep patterns to fit their new world. This dance of adjustment -- of children to the world and parents to children -- is what Go To Bed! is about.

Viewers explore:

• How babies spend months learning to adjust their biological clocks.
• Why babies sleep most of the time and why they sleep anytime, anywhere.
• How much sleep do we need to stay healthy?
• How the single word “sleep” describes multiple phases that differ as much as table tennis from baseball.
• The meaning of REM sleep and why it’s so important.
• Why “going to sleep” is never really being “out like a light.”
• How eating patterns and solid food change sleep habits for infants.
• Problems caused by the lack of sleep.
• What to do about an infant who stays awake and cries at night.
• The role of naps in child development.
• How parents can establish bedtime routines to help establish sound sleep habits.
• What to do about young children who fear the dark and “things that go bump in the night.”
• Safe sleep: sleeping positions, bedding, and cribs that create a safe environment.

If you teach child development or parenting education, Go To Bed! will prove a valuable tool.

22 minutes.

Copyright © 2006 Learning Seed