At 5 Little Monkeys, we've long been proponents of the importance of sleep for children. Heck, we even built a custom-designed children's mattress to support it! But as scientific research sheds more light on the effects of sleep on children, we're increasingly seeing just how critical good sleep is to a healthy childhood. New research indicates that the effects of sleep go far beyond energy: sufficient, high-quality sleep is important for mood, learning, growth, weight, and general health.

How Sleep Affects Kids

Your child's sleep schedule does a lot more than give you some peace and quiet for the night. Sleeping for the recommended number of hours every day carries benefits both important and wide-ranging. Here are a few of the benefits of a proper sleep schedule for kids:

• Healthy Growth: A child's body secretes the majority of its growth hormones during deep sleep, and during growth-intensive phases of life like infancy, that means kids need to be sleeping at least 50% of the time, meaning 12 to 16 hours per day. This is vital for proper physical growth and development.
• Weight Management: It turns out that insufficient sleep is linked to children becoming overweight, and the effects start as early as infancy. Sleep deprivation may impact the production of hormones that signal hunger and satiation, so it's important for kids to get enough sleep to maintain a healthy weight.
• Better Immune Function: Sleep is the body's time to repair, and that includes fighting off germs. Sleep promotes healthy immune function, helping children ward off infections and stay healthy in the long run.
• Learning & Attention: Sleep has profound effects on learning and attention span, which also means sleep impacts a child's performance in school – and that impact can be long term. Children who sleep less than 10 hours per night before age 3 are 3 times as likely to have hyperactivity or impulsivity problems by age 6, and research has found that proper sleep has an impact on learning & retention as early as infanthood.

Order a Premium Kids Bed Today

These are a few of the ways that proper sleep promotes health and growth, but the truth is that science is only beginning to understand the true importance of sleep on the health of children. One thing's for sure though: one of the best things you can do for your child is to help them get healthy, restful sleep. At 5 Little Monkeys, we work to create a specially-designed kids sleep system that gives kids exactly what they need for healthy, restful sleep. Give your child the gift of better sleep: order a 5 Little Monkeys kids mattress today!