What is the importance of rest for kids?

Rest means taking a break to relax and recharge our energy. Just like a phone needs to be charged to work properly, our bodies and brains need rest to function well. When we rest, we can think more clearly and feel happier. Helps Us Grow and Learn When we get enough rest, our bodies and brains grow stronger. During sleep, our brains sort through everything we’ve learned in the day. Resting gives our bodies time to fight off germs and stay strong. If we don’t rest enough, we might feel tired and could even get sick. Improves Our Mood When we’re well-rested, we tend to feel happier and more positive. Rest keeps our balloons full. Helps Us Focus Getting enough sleep helps us pay attention and do our best in school. Rest is very important for our growth, health, mood, and focus.

Sleep is important for all of us, but it is even more so for children and young people. While there are some short term effects, such as drowsiness and low mood, there are also long lasting more physical impacts when children, in particular, don’t get enough rest. Deep sleep is where an estimated 75% of human growth hormone is released. Children and sleep helps keep us healthy. When we sleep, our heart rate and blood pressure go down, meaning our hearts get time to rest and replenish. It also helps the body produce proteins used by the body to fight infection, illness, and stress. From school classes to discovering who they are and what they like, children are always learning. Their brains make sense of these things when they sleep. That is why lack of it can make them more forgetful. So good quality sleep is important for everyone but especially for children as it directly impacts on their mental and physical development.

It’s now widely recognised that getting enough sleep is essential for the healthy development of young minds. The Sleep Foundation notes that levels of rest in children have been shown to impact a wide range of health indicators, including Alertness Mood Resiliency Learning ability Memory Vocabulary acquisition Cognitive performance Physical growth. Not getting enough sleep can have a big impact on children. Even one night of insufficient sleep can cause youngsters to be tired and irritable the next day. Beyond just feeling tired, though, there are various ways that a lack of rest can impact youngsters. They discovered that the group that registered insufficient sleep had more behavioural and mental health challenges than those who got the recommended amount of shuteye. For example, they were more prone to stress, anxiety, depression, aggression and thinking problems. They also experienced impairments in cognitive functions, such as working memory, learning, conflict solving and decision making. Youngsters who got less than nine hours of sleep a night at the beginning of the study had a reduced amount of grey matter compared with those who had healthy sleep habits.

Resting allows children to unwind physically and emotionally, allowing them to be healthy and energised for the rest of the day. Rest is about more than just the physical, although that is an important aspect, rest is also about emotions. When children are resting or sleeping, their brain is still actively working, helping them process information from the day. Furthermore, this is also when the brain stores old memories, so a good night’s sleep is vital for this processing to occur. Sleep not only helps children feel refreshed for the day ahead, but it also allows the brain to work at its optimum. When the brain is at rest, it has time to sort all of the new information it has learned into categories and create new pathways for remembering it. The learning process is aided by increased attention spans, learning is much simpler with a relaxed brain. Children who do not get as much sleep as their peers have been known to finish their tasks more slowly while making more mistakes. According to studies, even an extra 27 minutes of sleep helps youngsters better manage their urges.

Sleeping is an essential part of our lives, it’s as important to our bodies as eating, drinking, and breathing. Sleep helps our brains and bodies recover from everything we did during the day. Getting enough sleep is necessary for maintaining a child’s physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. General advice on how to set up and maintain healthy sleep routines are very important for children’s physical, mental and emotional wellbeing at every developmental stage. Find out about the importance of sleep, how sleep behaviour changes as your child grows older, naps and creating a better sleep space for your child.