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As a sleep consultant, it?s no secret that I?m a fan of early bedtimes?especially for little kids. And as hard as it can be to get my nine-year old daughter and five-year-old twins into bed before 8 pm when everyone else their age seems to be staying up later, making sure they get the rest they need is at the top of my priority list.
Which is why I?m more than just a little bit excited about a recent study that trumpets the importance of early bedtimes. (See, kids" Mom knows what she?s talking about!)
The Journal of Pediatrics recently published a study associating later bedtimes for preschoolers with teen obesity. ?Preschool-aged children with early weekday bedtimes (8 p.m. or earlier) are one-half as likely as children with late bedtimes to be obese as adolescents,? wrote the researchers. The study looked at almost 1,000 families with preschoolers (mostly four-and-a-half-year-olds) and found that 25 per cent of the participants had ?early? bedtimes?anything 8 pm or earlier. Fifty per cent of the kids went to bed after 8 p.m. but before 9 p.m., and the other 25 per cent had ?late? bedtimes?meaning after 9 p.m. Of the preschoolers who had bedtimes later than 9 p.m., 23 per cent were obese (as measured by BMI) when they turned 15, whereas only 10 per cent of the early-bedtime preschoolers were obese at age 15. The study also found that children who were of ?non-white race/ethnicity, born to less educated mothers, or living in lower-income households we...