New research from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Irvine, support the observations that napping has benefits for children which enhance their mood, energy levels, and school performance. The findings were published in the journal SLEEP.
Penn neurocriminologist Adrian Raine, a co-author on the paper, said:
Children who napped three or more times per week benefit from a 7.6% increase in academic performance in Grade 6. How many kids at school would not want their scores to go up by 7.6 points out of 100?
The study involved nearly 3,000 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders ages 10-12. It revealed a connection between midday napping and greater happiness, self-control, and grit; fewer behavioral problems; and higher IQ (particularly for the sixth graders). Overall, the most robust findings were associated with academic achievement.
Daytime drowsiness and sleep deficiency affect up to 20% of all children, says lead author on the study Jianghong Liu, a Penn associate professor of nursing and public health. Yet, as widespread and common as the conditions are, most previous research has focused only on preschool age and younger. What’s more, the negative cognitive, emotional, and physical effects of poor sleep habits are well-established, so it’s unwise that research on the subject hasn’t targeted a wider age range.
Although, it’s not surprising because in places like the United States napping stops altogether as children get older. In China that is not the case. The practice of napping is embedded in daily life, continuing through elementary and middle school, even into adulthood. Which is exactly why Liu and Raine, together with Penn biostatistician Rui Feng, UC Irvine sleep researcher Sara Mednick and others, turned to the China Jintan Cohort Study, established in 2004 for their research. They followed the Chinese participants from toddlerhood through adolescence.
The researchers collected data from each of 2,928 children regarding napping frequency and duration from the moment the children hit Grades 4 till up through Grade 6, as well as outcome data when they reached Grade 6. Outcome data included psychological measures like grit and happiness and physical measures such as body mass index and glucose levels. They also requested teachers to provide behavioral and academic information about each student. Then they analyzed associations between each outcome and napping, adjusting for sex, grade, school location, parental education, and nightly time in bed.
Mednick said:
Many lab studies across all ages have demonstrated that naps can show the same magnitude of improvement as a full night of sleep on discrete cognitive tasks. Here, we had the chance to ask real-world, adolescent schoolchildren questions across a wide range of behavioral, academic, social, and physiological measures. Predictably, the more students sleep during the day, the greater the benefit of naps on many of these measures.
It was the first comprehensive study of its kind that reveals an alternative to the outcry from pediatricians and public health officials for later school start times. Liu said:
The midday nap is easily implemented, and it costs nothing, particularly if accompanied by a slightly later end to the day, to avoid cutting into educational time. Not only will this help the kids, but it also takes away time for screen use, which is related to a lot of mixed outcomes.
