Outdoor play activities 'help kids sleep better'
30/07/2009 New research has found that youngsters who run around all day and play in the garden actually sleep better.
In New Zealand, children's sleeping habits were measured against how much exercise, or activity the children took part in every day.
The experiment was measured on an 'actigraph' and concluded that kids who run around all day sleep more at night and kids who sleep more at night are more likely to run around all day.
A study included 519 healthy seven-year-olds from New Zealand, who each wore the actigraph device for 24 hours, recording movement and providing a measure of a child's activity level and sleep time.
Parents also noted when their child went to bed, allowing researchers to calculate how long after bedtime children actually fell asleep.
The researchers found a wide variation in how quickly children fell asleep, with some taking as little as 13 minutes and others needing more than 40 minutes after going to bed.
On average, children took an extra three minutes to fall asleep for every hour they weren't moving about during the day.
According to Bupa, children should be doing at least 60 minutes of physical activity each day, but four out of ten boys and six out of ten girls don't reach this target.
In New Zealand, children's sleeping habits were measured against how much exercise, or activity the children took part in every day.
The experiment was measured on an 'actigraph' and concluded that kids who run around all day sleep more at night and kids who sleep more at night are more likely to run around all day.
A study included 519 healthy seven-year-olds from New Zealand, who each wore the actigraph device for 24 hours, recording movement and providing a measure of a child's activity level and sleep time.
Parents also noted when their child went to bed, allowing researchers to calculate how long after bedtime children actually fell asleep.
The researchers found a wide variation in how quickly children fell asleep, with some taking as little as 13 minutes and others needing more than 40 minutes after going to bed.
On average, children took an extra three minutes to fall asleep for every hour they weren't moving about during the day.
According to Bupa, children should be doing at least 60 minutes of physical activity each day, but four out of ten boys and six out of ten girls don't reach this target.
