How many of you heard the phrase, sleep on it . Clock ticks. Youve heard that . Whats it if you go to school and you havent had a good nights sleep . How do you feel . Tiring. Cant be bothered walking to school. You cant even be bothered walking to school . No. Do you find it difficult to wake up in the morning . All yeah. I try and fall asleep in lessons, but i always get caught. Does anyone actually fall asleep in lessons . Does that ever happen . Ive seen someone do it in my french class before. Ifell asleep in english, because we read a book and i was reading a book and i was like that and then just. I fell asleep. You were nodding off . Yeah. A growing body of Research Shows that poor sleep jeopardises our Childrens School performance and their long term health. We desperately need to get childrens sleep onto the Public Health agenda. Weve done it with nutrition. People now are starting to understand the perils of sugar, the dangers of childhood obesity, they now need to wake up to the importance of sleep. Well, shall we go and get our pyjamas on . Crying. Its not only teens who are sleeping less. Toddlers are too. Elise is two and a half. Elise, were not running out of the bedroom. Her Bedtime Routine with parents jayne and nick starts at seven oclock and ends at ten thirty. Elise cries. At her age she should be getting between 11 and 12 hours sleep a night. She only gets ten. Itjust consumes your whole life, just one little thing, one word sleep. Dont throw betty. Wow, poor betty. Right, do you want that . Elise is part of a new generation who have grown up handling mobile technology from a very young age. Jayne and nick both work. Like thousands of parents across the country, they use tech to entertain their child in the evenings. so, i end up asking her if she wants it, because then i can come and get stuff done. in everyones Perfect Little world, that isnt going to happen, but unfortunately its the real world and it does. Theres hardly anywhere for families to turn to for quick, free advice. Charities, like the childrens sleep charity, have stepped in to help. They promote good sleep across the country, but in their hometown of doncaster theyve gone much further. Here, parents can refer themselves to a childrens Sleep Service and get an appointment with specially trained Sleep Advisers within weeks. Hi yes, colleen, do you want to come through . What are you expecting to see today . A full clinic of parents desperate for some sleep. She looks tired. Shes shattered, yeah. Absolutely shattered. The total hours of sleep he gets a night, would you say about an hour . About an hour. For seven weeks it was every night, to the point of, it was like, we cant do this any more. This had been every day since he were born, but its been, no, its been an all life battle. So, whats getting in the way of our childrens sleep . Both parents now often work, so evenings are busier in many households. Plus, there were no smartphones or tablets ten years ago. Now many adults and children cant live without them. Ipad just before bed with the tv on. How common is it that you hear that . All the time. Absolutely all the time. Especially with the teenagers. Its like asking them to remove their right arm if you ask them to get rid of the mobile or their ipad. So, this is a new thing, a new phenomenon interfering with kids . Yeah, absolutely. Jaynes postcode makes her eligible for the charitys one to one help to get elise to sleep before 10. 30pm. at the minute, shes saying, i dont want to get in bed, i dont want to go to sleep. Well give her her milk, and from that point shes, you know, running round, shell pick up the tablet and watch things on that. Is the tv on at this point . Yeah. The technology, as far as the lights on any screen. Yeah. Will keep herawake. Yeah. We do ask that parents switch it all off an hour before bedtime. Right. To give the brain time to relax. Mm . Hm. Our bodies release a hormone called melatonin when the sun goes down, which makes us feel sleepy. But the blue light from tvs, smartphones and tablets tells our brains its daytime, which reduces melatonin, making going to sleep much harder. And did you think that because shes quiet when shes in front of the tablet that that must be kind of calming her down . Yeah. I mean, i wouldnt have thought that just having the television on, even if she isnt looking at it, would be affecting whats going on inside her brain. Do you think thatd be difficult for you . To stop that . It probably would, because she will. She will have a tantrum about it, i know she will. They laugh. 92 of families say their childs sleep issue is resolved after using the doncaster clinics, yet a Sleep Service like this is rare in the uk. In most parts of the country, families must depend on their gp, who may refer them to a Specialist Consultant which can take four months. Whats the worst youve seen in terms of how bad poor sleep can affect a family . Weve seen some really terrible situations. Family break up. Weve seen parents that have had to give up work. Weve even had cases of breakdowns, you know, parents really suffering with their Mental Health because of the lack of sleep. More than 80 of children in the uk have a mobile phone by the age of 12. And 90 by the age of 15. Could we get a hands up who perhaps use a mobile phone in the last hour before going to bed . So, pretty much all of you. He laughs. Teachers at this school in yorkshire have become concerned that poor sleep is affecting students performance. And so, what you have here, this is like a mini sun. Working with panorama, Sleep Expert Guy Meadows has come to give these pupils some sleep education. Its rarely covered in most schools. But you may actually know that some of them actually have whats called a Blue Light Filter in them. If you swish up from the bottom, and if you press this button here, if you watch the screen. What happened to it . Most of the ii and i2 year olds in this classroom say theyre on their phones at bedtime. Why did this school decide to prioritise sleep and make it an important issue for students and parents . If a child hasnt enough sleep, it is a huge barrier, an enormous barrier for the child to try and overcome, just so they can engage at a level Playing Field with the other children within their class or with their peers. And what kinds of things are you seeing . The behaviours are exhibited in many ways. I mean, you obviously see the children who are quite obviously tired and distracted. You see the children whose Energy Levels drop during the course of the day. And we know that youre twice as likely to solve a problem after a good nights sleep compared to a poor nights sleep. The teacher and parents of these children told us theyre worried they arent getting the sleep they need. They each get around seven hours sleep a night. At their age, doctors recommend children should get between nine and eleven hours. So, did you learn anything new today . Yeah. That you can turn the blue light off on your phone. Yeah, or else you cant get to sleep. Do you think youd find it hard to give up using phones and tablets . Yeah. Our mum tries taking it off me, but i dont let her. Because, like, youre just texting your friends and they text back and you cant not text back. So, its notjust the light from the phones, but also, like, you feel like you cant switch your phone off. Yeah. Because you might be missing out on something. Yeah. Even with a Blue Light Filter, Technology Gets in the way of good sleep. What i would like to do now is some little exercises with you. Guy will test their concentration, short term memory and ability to solve problems. Just to find out how lack of sleep might be affecting your daytime performance. Most parents to all they can to help their children get on at school. I cant do it, its too fast. Yet they dont prioritise their sleep. I think what we need is a bit of a shift in our culture, in our education around sleep, and to recognise that, actually, sleep is one of the most powerful performance enhancers known to human kind. And if you are serious about your childs academic performance, then schools and parents should be really helping their children to get good quality sleep on a regular basis. This is because, when were asleep, our brains arent resting. Theyre incredibly active, consolidating and storing all that weve learnt during the day. While were asleep, memories that were stored away during the day that were in short term storage, that are just sitting there, havent been properly hard wired into our brain, are transferred up to our cortex and are hard wired for the future so that we can retrieve that information if we need it. If you havent slept as well, you wont have processed your learning during the night in the same way. Guy will give the children a new Evening Routine to encourage better sleep. Ways to do this include going to bed earlier and at the same time every night. Eating a snack like a banana or porridge, and avoiding fizzy drinks, chocolate or coffee. A bath or shower 30 minutes before bedtime. And no tv, phones or tablets in the hour before bed. When a child has a serious sleep problem, they can be referred to a Hospital Sleep Lab for overnight monitoring and investigation. Families must wait many months for an appointment. This Sleep Service at sheffield Childrens Hospital has seen a ten fold increase in referrals over the past decade. For many parents, this is kind of a last chance saloon, isnt it . Theyve tried a lot of Different Things and this is their last option of trying to work out why their child wont sleep. It can be for some families, but not all of them. Some of our families come on with a known condition and its just assessing that condition. There are other families that do come that are kind of. Really kind of at the end of their tether with the childs sleep. Lack of sleep awareness means that many parents dont know whats best for a childs sleep, even when its being observed overnight in hospital. I had one parent who had a full bottle of lucozade, and the child drank that full bottle of lucozade over the course of the night, woke up and drank it, and thats got caffeine in it. I actually questioned the parent, they didnt realise it had caffeine in it. Ten year old harley is spending the night under observation in the lab. He gets an average of five hours sleep a night. He should be getting nearly ten. Hello hi. You must be harley. Yeah. Hello, imjenny. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too. So it takes you a while to go to sleep. Mmm. And do you wake up in the middle of the night . Yeah. What happens when you wake up . I shout on my mum. He gets up at, like, four, five oclock, and then hes up, ready. For the day . Yeah. School uniform and everything on, so. Whats it like when youre at school, harley . Its all right. I dont get on with people very well, though. Really . Yeah. Do you think sleeping badly has got anything to do with that . Yeah. In what way . Cos, lets say theyre saying i cant play with them, illjust get moody and stroppy and that with them. But then i get told off. So. Hes got to be prompted constantly by teachers to do his work, and if hes not constantly got someone on his back prompting him, then his work wont get done. What medication does he take . Ive got it in my bag. I think its melatonin. harley has been prescribed a synthetic version of melatonin, the hormone that makes us feel sleepy. yeah, it is melatonin. Yeah, but its got a different name. Circadin. Melatonin. It made a difference to start off with, but now its not, hes back again to how he was. Do you think that the solution might be taking tablets, or do you think the solution might be doing something a bit differently . Id prefer the solution be Something Different than having to take medication for the rest of his life, so im willing to try a different outlook to help him to sleep. Right, so these are the wires, 0k . Do they hurt, or. They dont hurt at all. Melatonin is only licensed for use by those over 55. But gps can prescribe it to younger people at their own discretion. Nhs data analysed by Panorama Shows nhs england spent nearly £14 million on unlicensed melatonin in 2015 ten times more prescriptions than a decade ago. Leading consultants have told us prescribing to children has become increasingly common, and it might not even help them in the long run. A lot of these medications are not licensed for children. I think a lot of children are prescribed medication which may initially have some benefit, but the benefit then wanes and they dont have any means of improving their sleep habits. What are you measuring with all of these wires . We are looking at brainwaves, which help us with the sleep staging. We record Eye Movements to help us identify rem sleep and when someones becoming drowsy. And then we pop some stickers on their legs, and thats to look for limb movements, and then were also looking at respiratory things as well. So, thats everything on. Its two hours since he turned in and hes still awake . Hes still awake at the moment. Just cant seem to settle. This is. This is poor quality sleep. The investigation showed no physical reason for harleys sleep problem. The Specialist Team will continue to work with his family to try and establish the cause of his poor sleep, looking at changes to his Bedtime Routine and reviewing his sleep medication. Theres another reason that poor sleep is increasingly common for children obesity. More than a third of todays teenagers are overweight or obese, leaving them more likely to suffer from sleep apnoea, a serious sleep disorder. Why are obese people more likely to suffer from sleep apnoea . Apnoea is kind of the posh term for a pause in breathing. Its to do with the extra fat around the airway. Um, so, obviously when you go to sleep you lose a little but of muscle tone around airway, so any extra pressure on your airway can then affect how that functions while youre asleep. Sleep apnoea cases in children have risen by 25 since 2012. Deep snoring yet we now know that while obesity can cause Sleep Problems, poor sleep can also lead to obesity. Its a vicious cycle. So we have two hormones in our body that control whether we feel hungry and whether we feel full. And the balance of those hormones, certainly from the adult research, are abnormal when people havent had enough sleep. So it may well be that the Hormonal Imbalance is what drives people to want to eat more if they havent had enough sleep. 13 year old ellie is overnighting in the sleep lab. She gets as little as two and a half hours sleep a night. The lab is investigating whether a medical condition like sleep apnoea might be behind it. Ellies poor sleep began after she badly broke herfoot six years ago. How old was she when she had her accident . I was seven. Seven. She had to learn to stand and walk again, and she started putting on weight. So we noticed the weigh gain there with the cheeks and that. When youre sat there not exercising, the weightjust come on. We kept her off chocolate, we kept her off crisps. Ellie would wake up because of the pain, so then wed be up about two in the morning. Then it got me tired. It were like having a newborn baby again. This is. This is clean for her. This is clean. This is where you try and get your sleep . Yeah. Ellie has been on a diet for six months, and shes lost two and a half stone. So, at the moment youre trying a personal trainer. Youre on a diet now . Yes. Im not allowed any carbs after four and ive got to have lots of protein and vegetables and fruit. Sometimes ijust. I get sick of it. Today, ellie is booked in to see a nurse from the sleep lab for a follow up. Theyve ruled out everything, like, night terrors, sleepwalking, and you didnt have obstructive sleep apnoea. Didnt show any signs. Thats negative, so thats good. With sleep apnoea ruled out, the hospital suspects that Ellie Mightjust need a better sleep routine. What technology do you have in your room . I have my telly. Ipad. Iphone. Two ipads. Do you use these to settle off to sleep . Before i go to bed, like, i might sit on my phone or my ipad for a bit. With her sleep pattern, do you know, like, herweight gain, if she doesnt sleep, does that affect her weight and things like that . Definitely, definitely. Right. Thats why, when she were dieting, when shes had weeks where she hasnt slept right well and weve been at training and shes gained weight and im thinking, how can she . You know when youre tired . I did a night shift on friday night, i couldnt eat, and then when i did come round i wanted to eat and craved all the fattiest food you can imagine. The Research Backs this up. Not only is poor sleep thought to affect our hormones, its also shown to make us want unhealthy foods. Theres been some excellent studies done in the states with teenagers it showed that if you sleep deprive teenagers they eat about 9 more calories. And theyre more likely to choose sugars, starchy foods. And if you added that up over an entire year they would be increasing their weight by about four kilos during the year. Ellies new routine includes no tech an hour before bed, and a later bath time. It might help both her sleep and her weight loss. Does it ring true to you that when youve had a bad night, you dont want to exercise, youre hungry for the wrong kinds of foods. Did that ring bells . Yeah, um, sometimes when ive had a really terrible nights sleep, then im just like, oh, do i have to go Training Today . Do i have to have that . Can ijust, like, have a sandwich or can i have mcdonalds or Something Like that . But i did learn quite a lot. Two and a half year old elise has been given a new, earlier Bedtime Routine. Until now, settling her has taken up to three hours. We dont know how elise is going to react to the change of it all, cos shes been so used to doing what she does. Shall we take it upstairs . Taking the tablet away from her on a night and switching the television off, is that going to create a tantrum . Elise, come on. Its not playtime now, is it . She cries were nervous, apprehensive, fearful that it wont work, and theres a lot of pressure on it as well. You kind of feel like its the last resort. No come on, into. No the charity agrees a routine that parents are comfortable with. One option is gradually retreating away from a childs bedside as they fall asleep. Whee jayne and nick have gone for the alternative. They will put elise to bed and leave the room. Dont go were just going to go out there, darling. When she cries, they should return briefly to settle her, repeating until she falls asleep. Daddy parents today are more likely to be gentler with their children than a generation ago. Many worry that allowing a child to cry could do them long term damage. She cries any feisty child will protest and want their own way. Its helpful, i think, for parents to think about other situations where a child may cry, but nonetheless they would promote that. Say, for example, having your child vaccinated. We know its in their best interests, so we still do it. Night night, its ok. What evidence is there that it doesnt harm a child if they cry as theyre learning how to put themselves to sleep . We do have some really very, very reassuring research on this exact point. And what they found was there was absolutely no difference between children whod had the intervention and children whod had no intervention at all. So managing Child Behaviour in an appropriate way has no long term repercussions for the child, and to the contrary, has really positive benefits for the family. Its a very personal choice, and there is no right or wrong method. But letting a child cry before returning quickly does not harm them, even though, like many other parents, jayne has struggled with it. You just get this rack of guilt cos youve just made your child cry. Itjust makes you feel the most terrible person in the world. After only two days of using this approach, it seems to be working for elise, jayne and nick. I think not using the tablet and not using the television has calmed her down so now, in two nights, were an hour and a quarter earlier than. Yeah. What became the norm. Welcome back. Its a week since these pupils in yorkshire were given tech free sleep routines. All of your friends are, like, texting each other and stuff and then you cant be in the conversation, but you get used to it. You get used to it. Its annoying, but it helps sleep. Its meant theyre sleeping an average of an hour more a night. Theyve re done the tests, and the results are striking. So, the first exercise that we did was your memory tests. And what we actually found is that your memory tests improved by 57 . And then we did a little focus and attention exercise, and actually you guys improved your ability to be focused and attentive by 44 . And then the final test that we did was the Problem Solving Exercise and we found that your Problem Solving Ability Increase by 61 . So well done these results are backed up by existing research that shows only an hour less sleep over three consecutive nights can significantly affect brain performance. Some Amazing Research showed that if children are sleep deprived byjust an hour, it can actually reduce their cognitive academic performance by up to two whole years. So its the equivalent of them being two whole years behind. We take sleep for granted, but its becoming increasingly clear that a child who sleeps well is more likely to be able to perform at school, to control their emotions, to stay well and to maintain a healthy weight. Most childrens Sleep Problems cant be prescribed away. We need a change in attitudes so we value good sleep as a vital part of our Childrens Health and wellbeing. If you could manufacture a pill that improved your cognitive function, that improved your emotional regulation, that stopped you reaching for the biscuit tin and having the munchies in the afternoon, youd be a millionaire. And actually, its there. That is what sleep can help you with. And its free. Did you imagine thatjust simple things like this could solve your problems . Not at all. And whats frustrating about that, the thing is, you get so much advice about diet and food and five a day and seven a day and whatever the norm is today, but you dont get any advice about sleep. A very warm welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to our viewers in North America and around the globe. My names mike embley. Our top stories pushed from power south koreas highest Court Upholds the impeachment of president park, over a corruption scandal. Clashes on the streets of the Capital Seoul as the verdict is announced. The ruling means she could now face criminal charges. More american states have filed legal challenges to president trumps revised travel ban on six mainly muslim countries, arguing it remains unconstitutional. And, freed thanks to a bbc investigation so what happened next to the Baby Chimpanzee stolen by Animal Traffickers . Hello
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