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Inda Schaenen is a freelance writer and fulltime mother of three children, ages four, seven, and ten. She and her family live in St. Louis, Missouri.

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Are children hardwired to stay up late, scarfing down cookies and soda and surfing the Internet? No, says Inda Schaenen, who advocates a no-nonsense, nurturing approach that will help you get your kids into bed by 7 o'clock -- and help you make a saner life for yourself.

Most kids today are overscheduled, and consequently they're often wound up and active until late in the evening. But when kids are exhausted, bedtime becomes a struggle and everyone loses.

The solution? Put your kids to bed at 7 o'clock and reap the benefits:

• Your kids get the rest they need to grow and learn.

• You set a daily pace that allows kids to be kids.

• You get a much-needed break in the evenings.

• The whole family thrives under less stress.

In this revolutionary book, Inda Schaenen helps you restructure your children's daily schedules from dawn till dusk, suggesting dozens of lifestyle changes that will reduce crankiness, improve school performance, and give you back control of your life. You'll learn why your kids need a 7 o'clock bedtime and, most important, how to make it happen. The book includes a detailed timetable; advice for dealing with vacations, school breaks, travel, And illness; and quick and healthful recipes. And Schaenen's wise, reassuring tone will inspire you to make this important and beneficial change.

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The 7 O'Clock Bedtime

ReganBooks

Chapter One

Why Bother?
(Or, Honestly, Isn't 7 O'clock a Little Too Early?)

Nancy Birkenmeier is a nurse with the Unity Sleep Medicine and Research Center at St. Luke's Hospital in St. Louis. Over the course of 1999 and 2000, says Birkenmeier, the center received an increasing number of calls from preschool and elementary school teachers concerned about children falling asleep during school hours.

"It's very, very scary," Birkenmeier says of the trend. "The kids start having trouble going to sleep, and bedtime gets pushed later and later. Ultimately, older children start sleeping late and arriving late to school. They have trouble getting their work done, and some, eventually, drop out of school altogether. After tenth or eleventh grade the prognosis for these kids is very poor. Their parents have given up years before that, and all we can say is, 'We wish we'd gotten this kid two years ago.'"

Brown University's Judith Owens seconds the alarm: "Children between five and twelve should be the most alert people on earth," says this pediatrician, who is an associate professor of pediatrics at Brown University School of Medicine and directs the Pediatric Sleep Disorders Clinic at Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. "When you've got children falling asleep on the school bus or in the classroom, that is a huge red flag," she says. "If you've gotten to that point, you're in serious trouble."

One experienced administrator at an independent elementary school in suburban St. Louis speaks of similar eye-opening experiences with some of the children under her watch. This professional sees children arrive at school each day suffering from the following symptoms: an inability to focus on tasks at hand; immune system weakness; reduced ability to reason; impaired memory retrieval; dysfluency (difficulty producing speech); and physical impulsiveness. She says these are all by-products of the children not getting the sleep they need, not because of any physiological malfunction like apnea (physical causes are always ruled out first), but simply because well-intentioned parents are privileging daytime activities at the expense of their children's sleep.

My husband, who for twenty years has taught English in independent high schools both in the Northeast and Midwest, adds two other symptoms of sleep deprivation he encounters regularly in his classroom. "I see a lack of creativity and a higher level of general anxiety," he says. "Of course these two things go hand in hand. When you're anxious, you cannot think creatively. These kids are just doing too much during the day."

In early 2000, Owens published a study revealing that 37 percent of the 494 suburban, middle-class children she examined suffered from at least one sleep-related problem. Teachers and parents completed Owens's survey, and the older children completed a survey on their own behalf as well. The children ranged in age from kindergarten through fourth grade. Owens says she feels her mission as a scientist and a pediatrician is to get the information before the public, both directly through the media and through her professional association with fellow pediatricians, who might do much more, she feels, to screen for sleep problems at regular checkups.

Sleep researchers like Owens and Stanford University's William C. Dement point to sleep deprivation as a significant cause of children's behavioral and learning problems. The results of current studies leave no doubt as to the consequences of compromising sleep, and the quantifiable consequences are predictably sobering.

First, a child's mood and temperament deteriorate. A chronically tired child is irritable and more easily frustrated than a well-rested child. The tired, emotionally labile child tends to overreact to his environment. Some children develop a depressive nature, losing the will or interest to participate in work and play.

Neuropsychological deficits appear next. Short-term memory falters, followed by a reduced ability to organize material. The overtired child is less able to react to situations appropriately and promptly, and loses the ability to reflect on his own behavior. He has trouble organizing his time, which leads to problems with completing homework and other personal responsibilities. These combined tasks -- what scientists call "executive functioning" -- reflect our highest order of cognitive thought, and are fundamentally compromised when the average child's need for sleep is compromised. I know I see enough children -- my children's peers -- manifesting each of these symptoms in the course of a single, average, uneventful day to make me wonder what's going on with their bedtimes.

Sadly, average children unchallenged by preexisting medical conditions are not the only children who aren't getting enough sleep. The sleep scientists I have spoken with all agree that children with intrinsic, preexisting problems like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and aggressive behavior are worse off when they don't get enough sleep. Although scientists cannot yet assert that sleep deprivation actually causes these conditions, children with ADHD and hyperactivity "clearly have many more sleep problems," according to Rolanda Maxim, a developmental pediatrician and assistant professor of pediatrics at St. Louis University. Maxim explains that doctors used to believe that the medications used for treating these disorders were causing the sleep problems. Now, however, they're not so sure.

"It's very hard to say which causes which," Maxim says. "Hyper kids have a lot of noradrenaline, the neurotransmitter implicated in sleep regulation. This could be causing a whole disregulation of the central nervous system."

In early 2000 the media were abuzz with the subject of medicated children, loudly questioning how it came to be that the number of very young children taking psychotropic drugs had increased so dramatically. During this time I heard sensible voices urging people to have their children properly diagnosed before medicating them. I heard sensible voices urging parents not to assume automatically that these drugs were bad. I heard sensible voices arguing for managed care to support alternative therapies like counseling and behavior modification and not be in such a hurry for the quick fix.

Excerpted from The 7 O'Clock Bedtimeby Schaenen, Inda Copyright © 2004 by Inda Schaenen. Excerpted by permission.
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