Managing Your Child's Chronic Pain by Tonya M. Palermo

Author:Tonya M. Palermo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

8. Schedule Adequate Sleep for Your Child’s Needs

It is important to help your child develop a schedule that allows for enough sleep. As mentioned earlier, most teens need about 9 hours of sleep to function at their best, and younger children will need slightly more. This may be more than you or your teen thought. In developing a schedule that allows for enough sleep, you can talk with your child about choices that can be made to establish a more ideal sleep schedule.

We usually explain to children that there are two ends of the schedule (bedtime and wake time) that can be altered to get enough sleep. Their job is to help fit in their necessary activities between these hours. For some children, it is fairly easy to find ways to alter either bedtime or wake time to increase sleep duration. For example, how your child gets to school (e.g., transportation options) may greatly influence the morning wake time. In some families, choices such as carpooling instead of taking the bus may be an option for extending a child’s sleep. In addition, performing certain activities the night before (e.g., showers, making lunches, getting materials ready for school) can reduce the number of morning tasks so that sleep can be extended in the morning. In general, most children are more receptive to lengthening the morning wake time than they are to making the bedtime earlier, so it is worth discussing creative options for doing this. We encourage you to sit down with your child and outline a specific sleep schedule that will allow for adequate sleep. Putting in writing a proposed bedtime (e.g., 9:30 p.m.) and wake time (e.g., 7:30 a.m.) can help your child see how it might be possible for him or her to get more sleep.

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