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March/April 2008
by Sue Costello and Richard Weissbourd
Last year, school staff at the Lee
Academy Pilot School, a public school for children age three
through third grade in Dorchester, Mass., became concerned about
the number of children across grades who were regularly coming to
school too tired to focus and stay engaged. Instead of hosting a
parent workshop on sleep deprivation, which might be attended by
only a few parents, the school social worker and a social work intern
decided to conduct an action-research project to gather data on
the problem and discern the causes of sleep deprivation among students.
The social workers began by asking parents of
children in one preschool classroom to track evening activities
in their households from 7 p.m. until wake-up the next morning.
They sent a letter home informing families that they were trying
to better understand the connection between sleep routines and classroom
behavior and that they would be contacting the parents by phone
for a brief, 10-minute conversation about their child’s sleep
habits and bedtime routine. Parents were also asked to fill out
a chart showing how much time the child spent reading, watching
TV, or playing video games in the evening; when the child went to
bed; with whom the child slept; and whether the child woke up independently
or had to be awakened. In addition, parents had the opportunity
to participate in a follow-up phone conversation, for which they
received a thank-you “sleepy time” gift. About 60 percent
of the parents participated. The study found that children were
getting an average of 9.5 hours of sleep at night, well below the
11.5-12 hours that 3- and 4-year-olds need.
Simultaneously, the classroom teacher observed
and tracked the behaviors, mood, and academic engagement of each
student. She saw a connection between the amount of sleep children
had and their behavior and mood. The children getting less sleep
and who were sleepy when they were awakened in the morning tended
to be more irritable, teary, and distracted and had more difficulty
controlling impulses.
The social workers then conducted face-to-face
interviews with five of the participating families and phone interviews
with several others to solicit additional information about what
their evenings were like—for example, did they eat meals together?
How often did the child have caffeine during the day? How many evenings
during the week did the caretaker and child read together? Was there
a consistent routine to help the child wind down? They also asked
about who the child was sleeping with, the number of people living
in the home, the level of financial stress, the work hours for adults
in the home, and any family history of mental illness.
The data they gathered revealed many reasons that
children weren’t getting enough sleep. A common problem was
television use. Some three- and four-year-old children were watching
television until nine or ten at night and then sleeping with the
television on. Another common problem was finding a comfortable,
quiet place to sleep. Children’s sleep was frequently compromised
because they were sleeping on poor mattresses or sharing mattresses
with relatives. Many families had other adult family members living
with them for cultural and financial reasons, which sometimes created
overcrowding and noise that made sleep difficult.
Sleep troubles can have many other causes, including
hunger, poor nutrition, and anxiety, as well as various medical
conditions. The follow-up interviews indicated that some parents
were too stressed and overwhelmed to establish regular bedtime routines,
often because they were working in the evening. One 24-year-old
single mother of three children ages 10, 3, and 2 spoke poignantly
about how her untreated depression interfered with her ability to
be engaged in her family’s evening routine. Most evenings,
she said, “I want to lie down and I have to remind myself
that my kids need me to help out. My 10-year-old son tells me, ‘Mommy,
I know you’re tired, but we still need to eat.’ He helps
out a lot.”
Rather than jumping in to try to solve these sleep-related
problems, the social workers asked parents the general question:
“Since sleep deprivation is a problem for many kids at our
school, what do you think would help students sleep better?”
The parents were very open to strategizing ways to get their children
to sleep earlier and had a host of ideas for helping other parents
at the school. Although television habits had emerged as an important
issue, some parents said that television had become an ingrained
aspect of bedtime routines and that it would be hard to simply turn
off the television. Instead, they had other suggestions, including
a school mattress drive. In addition, all parents—regardless
of their own reading level or interest—spoke proudly of their
children’s excitement about and love of reading, which school
staff realized could be an avenue for introducing new bedtime routines.
This year, staff members at the Lee Academy intend
to follow up on the results of this study by providing education
and concrete help on this issue to parents throughout the school.
For instance, the school is implementing a school-wide home reading
campaign that will have many positive benefits, including helping
families incorporate more reading—and less television—into
the evening bedtime routines. Other plans include posting ongoing
articles in the weekly newsletter on bedtime tips and strategies
and establishing a parent resource-exchange board to help families
who need beds find them. School staff members also plan to track
the number of children coming to school sleep deprived to monitor
the effectiveness of these interventions, so that these strategies
can be adjusted and new strategies developed as need be.
Sue Costello is a social worker at the Lee
Academy Pilot School. Richard Weissbourd is a lecturer at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education.
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