For every hour they sit still it takes them three minutes longer to doze off
Parents have long known it to be true: active kids fall asleep faster at night. In a new study of 519 children, the BBC reports, researchers have shown that for every hour of inactivity, kids need three minutes longer to fall asleep. What the children did while sitting still was irrelevant: whether they watched TV, or read a book, made no difference. What’s more, children who took longer to fall asleep behaved just as well as the others, shows the study in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. Most kids fell asleep within 45 minutes; those who fell asleep faster, slept for longer. “As short sleep duration is associated with obesity and lower cognitive performance, community emphasis on the importance of promoting healthy sleep in children is vitally important,” the researchers wrote. “This study emphasizes the importance of physical activity for children, not only for fitness, cardiovascular health and weight control, but also for sleep.”