Knowledge is power

Just a day before the new school year begins, CBC is reporting on two new studies supporting the commonsense conclusion that well rested students perform best.

Dr. Jacques Montplaisir of the Sleep Disorders Centre at Sacre-Coeur Hospital in Montreal and his colleagues tracked close to 1,500 children from five months to six years of age, and their findings suggest that youngsters who got less sleep were more likely to have behavioural and cognitive problems in the classroom.

“The results of the paper highlight the importance of giving a child the opportunity to sleep at least 10 hours a night throughout childhood, especially before the age of 3½ years, to ensure optimal cognitive performance” in school, Montplaisir said in a statement.

And a study by Jan Van den Bulck in Leuven, Belgium, looked at teenagers — and found that the use of cellphones for calling and text messaging after lights out was prevalent. Only 38 per cent of the more than 1,600 teens studied said they never used their mobile phone after going to bed.

In other words, children listen to your mothers when they tell you to go to bed early and don’t stay up all night playing video games and in the case of teenagers partying or talking on the phone about the cool kids in class. I remember when I was a kid, I had to be in bed by 8:00pm and up by 6:30pm giving me plenty of time for rest. I hated that I had to go to bed so early because all the good TV shows would come up after 9:00pm but arguing with my mother was not an option. I can’t say that I regret following her wishes now!