Sleeping late, waking up late new normal for children?

KUALA LUMPUR: For the past 50 days or so, Mary’s two children, both primary school pupils, have been getting to bed way past midnight and waking up the next afternoon.

This routine of theirs started with the imposition of the Movement Control Order (MCO) on March 18 to check the spread of Covid19 in the country. The MCO, among others, also resulted in the closure of schools.

Mary has had a tough time coaxing her children to get to bed early because they often tell her they cannot sleep early and stay awake until as late as 2 am.

“As a result, they wake up in the afternoon. I am worried that they may not be able to change their routine once school reopens after the MCO is lifted,” she lamented.

Mary’s predicament is not unlike R. Devi’s. The 45-year-old mother said her 15-year-old daughter also sleeps late and wakes up late.

“My daughter is a home-schooling student. She usually studies at night but she also wakes up early to follow the morning lessons from home. With the MCO in force, she has been waking up late. I am worried that she may carry the habit into adulthood,” said Devi.

Sleeping late and waking up late have become the routine for many school children as families adapt to the new normal under the MCO.

The routine is seen more in children than adults because, with schools closed, they have more free time at home, and they usually get reprimanded by their parents as well.

Parents fear that their children will have difficulty adjusting to the normal routine once schools reopen with the lifting of the MCO.

Dr Deepa Darshini Amarnath, a clinic psychiatrist at Kuala Lumpur Hospital, said the MCO can disrupt the routine of children considering that there is an absence of the usual social support from their peers and teachers.

She said the sudden change in routine can lead to varying levels of anxiety, fear and sadness in children and they will need their parents to be with them at all times, and it can also affect their sleep pattern.

“We all have an in-built body clock which is affected by daylight. When an individual (adult or child) stays indoors all the time, the brain does not receive the external cues (daylight) it needs to regulate a proper sleep pattern. This could in turn affect the sleep cycle of the child.

“To avoid this, try to stick as closely as possible to their prior routine (waking up at the same time, similar meal times, and for activities) and create a timetable of family activities. For children with special abilities such as autism, make a visual timetable that is less anxiety-provoking for them and assign simple tasks to the child; make them feel good that they are also helping out,” she told Bernama. – Bernama