It’s called a challenge for a reason. Disruptions to sleep happen. We talked about the stages of sleep and mentioned the benefits and consequences of disrupting certain stages of the cycle. While we love to optimize and strategize here, we acknowledge that life happens most often in the gray area.
One of these areas that either has, does, or will impact most people is children. Children and sleep is such a big topic, we’ll only scratch the surface. Children have minds of their own. They arrive preprogrammed with desires, quirks, and preferences. One of these preprogrammed areas is sleep. Some kids love sleep. Some hate it. Some say they hate it but fall asleep as soon as their heads lower toward a pillow. I wish my kids were like that. No, my kids are nighttime troublemakers.
Kids will fall asleep and wake up at different times. Sometimes they wake up in the middle of the night sick, scared, or needing to play with an important toy. Those troublemakers like to turn lights on to hunt for toys in the middle of the night. Like I said, this is where life often happens. And I feel very gray when this happens. These are disruptions that parents sign up for. These are disruptions that anyone who lives with small children could experience. It’s not a question of ‘if.’ It’s a question of when and how often.
Here’s a little insight from a veteran parent. Kids go to sleep earlier than adults. Some kids go to sleep a lot earlier than adults. Kids like to wake up during the night at any hour, but especially between 12 and 2 AM. That’s why parents often say they were up in the middle of the night. If you go to bed after 11 PM, it’s unlikely you’ll make it into deep sleep before the disruptions happen. If you go to bed earlier, you increase the odds that you’ll get more restorative sleep before the disruptions happen. This is no guarantee. Kids don’t come with those. The difference in how you feel if you get restorative sleep versus poor sleep before the disruptions during the night can be dramatic. It’s the difference between falling asleep at work as opposed to powering through the day without anyone noticing you’re not 100%. Consider this another hidden benefit of the 10x10 Sleep Challenge. When I go to sleep at 10 PM, those 2 hours before midnight do more for me than sleeping late the next morning. I can’t support this with charts or numbers, but I feel it and the feeling is real. Thanks for joining us in this challenge this month. Don’t let the disruptions get you down. Keep the real feeling going by getting your rest.