
Long holidays often mean the chance to sleep in. For many parents, it’s time to let kids stay up late and allow them to catch up on sleep the next morning. A few late nights and sleep-ins won’t hurt, but it’s best not to fall completely off the bedtime routine during the holidays. It can be very hard to get back on track once school starts. It’s fine to be more flexible about bedtime in the holidays than during school time. But parents must factor in the negative effects once out of control.
Even relatively minor differences in wake time can upset your circadian rhythms (昼夜节律). Sleep science research supports the need for bed and wake times to be consistent across the week and weekend. That’s not just because it ensures young people get enough sleep; even more importantly, it helps because our circadian clock needs regularity. Sleepiness and circadian rhythms need to be regular so they can work together. When they do, it is best for our quality of sleep but also for our general health.
Irregular rhythms — which happen when bed times and wake times are significantly different between school weeks and weekends — can negatively affect mood, psychological and physical health, social engagement and school performance. The risk with letting kids go to bed late a few nights in a row is that they’ll sleep progressively later each day. If this happens over the entire school holidays, not only could the bedtime get later and later but the circadian rhythm will become accustomed to being later and later. If so, resetting the circadian clock to a school-friendly, manageable time is certainly possible. But it requires some considerable readjustments and sometimes professional help.
If wake times do get out of kilter, try making them progressively earlier and earlier gradually over a few weeks before school starts until the required wake time is achieved. A better solution might be to make sure circadian rhythms don’t get out of control in the first place.
原创编写 版权所有 侵权必究! 每日更新 个性化阅读 英语飙升!