I was doing some research on sleep patterns in children. School age children should get 10 hours of sleep. James begs to go to bed 7:30-8:30 most nights so he’s fine. Davy, on the other hand, has never slept good and a good night is 8 hours. He only gets that much because we homeschool and I can let him sleep til 9 or 10 am if he stayed up til 1 or 2 am the night before. He can’t take the natural supplement, Melatonin, because that triggers his asthma. We’ve done a prescription in the past but we had not used it lately because we were able to be more relaxed with his schedule at home.
So I got to thinking, this really seems to bother us more than it does him. But things got turned upside down when he had a seizure-like episode. So far all the tests are turning up nothing that could have triggered it. But since I have epilepsy and I know lack of sleep is one of my triggers, we put him back on the prescription. Well, he went to sleep a lot sooner at night but now he’s waking up a whole lot earlier in the morning. Getting no more sleep, just sleeping during different hours. Some of this has to be just his different way of sleeping that just doesn’t fit into the norm.
I found this article about sleep in pre-industrialized times. Apparently people used to go to bed at sunset, sleep 4 hours, wake up to read, meditate, do chores, etc, and then go back to sleep for another 4 hours. Maybe it’s just me, but it makes a whole lot of sense. I usually wake up after 4 hours or so but I’ve trained myself to go back to sleep.
Another article talks about what we perceive as sleep problems may not be actually a problem at all. Maybe we’re just getting back to a natural rhythm of days-gone-by.
I got to thinking that it makes Proverbs 31 make a whole lot of sense.
She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.
Prov 31:15 (KJV)
What if she used that time between sleep cycles to get a head start on the food preparation for the day? If I had that time, I could clean without kids undoing my work as fast as I could do it. I could work on gifts that I didn’t want the children to see yet. I could spend some quiet time reading and studying.
I got curious and starting looking up other references in the Bible to sleep.
It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.
Psalms 127:2 (KJV)
So is God telling us to go to bed early and sleep late? I don’t think so because sleep is also associated with idleness.
How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? 10 Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: 11 So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.
Prov 6:9-11 (KJV)
All of these verses just make the first sleep and second sleep cycle make way more sense than expecting the long periods of uninterrupted sleep.
So I have decided not to worry so much when I wake up at midnight. And not stress too much over Davy sticking to a schedule that may not be ideal for us at all. I’ll keep him on the prescription for a few more weeks and hope that it will establish the habit of at least starting the first sleep cycle by 8pm. So if he wakes up, he still has time to get another sleep cycle in.
We’ve put in movies on occasion when he wakes up early and I don’t think that qualifies as a quiet activity. So if he wakes up now, I think we need to read or let him draw (who knows, that might be his most creative time of the day) and establish a habit of quiet activities that mimic those of ancient times. That way, when he’s an adult, he will have those habits to fall back on when momma and daddy aren’t there to tell him that he needs his sleep. Then maybe he won’t need to be on a prescription that can affect his day time performance.
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