Sleep is as Important as Studying for School-Aged Kids

School is starting very soon for many students around the U.S., while others started this past week. As your children head back to the classroom, it’s a good idea to consider the things that will help them succeed. One of the tops on your list should absolutely be sleep.

A 2010 study conducted by British and American professors found that sleep may be just as important as studying when it comes to learning new things. By entering a deep sleep, your brain is better able to establish connections between new facts and previous knowledge.

Researchers recruited 60 subjects with normal sleep patterns and broke them into two equal groups. In the morning, the first group learned a batch of 30 fake words, each sounding similar to real words. They then returned later in the evening to take a test on how well they learned the words. Meanwhile, the second group studied the same phony words at nighttime. This group did not complete their vocabulary test until the following morning after a full night’s sleep.

Once the tests were scored, researchers found that the subjects who slept after learning the new words performed much better than those who were awake throughout the day.

If you haven’t started making a sleep plan for your family for this school year, start by checking out our article 10 Tips for Better Back-to-School Sleep.