Up until the age of twenty-one years old, a child’s brain is developing. Tired children can’t remember what they just learned, for instance, because neurons lose their plasticity, becoming incapable of forming the new synaptic connection necessary to encode a memory.
Sleep loss debilitates the body’s ability to extract glucose from the bloodstream. Parents, who are accustom to sleep deprivation, might wonder why their children aren’t capable of the same thing.
Kids’ sleep is qualitatively different than grownups’ sleep because children spend more than 40% of their asleep time in the slow-wave stage, which is ten times the proportion that older adults spend.
The potential costs of letting children stay up later that one hour: IQ points, emotional well-being, ADHD, and obesity.
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