The lacksleep
To function optimally, the human brain needs rest. However, sleep has practically become “an optional behavior”, laughs the DD Linda Pagani, professor of psychoeducation and researcher at CHU Sainte-Justine specializing in the factors that influence the development of the child’s brain.
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, THE PRESS
The DD Linda Pagani, full professor at the School of Psychoeducation and researcher at the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center of the University of Montreal
A 2012 study showed that over the past 100 years, humans have reduced the length of their nights by one minute per year. In other words, children today sleep an hour less than 60 years ago. It’s a lot.
“The rate of sleep decline is reported more in children at the start of primary school and adolescents, with a greater decline in boys and on school days,” says Evelyne Touchette, child sleep researcher and professor. at the psychoeducation department of the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières (UQTR). This can explain many things.
Because the prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain most affected by lack of sleep. And what is it for? “It helps us to regulate our emotions, to make the right decisions, to organize ourselves,” replies the expert. 6-year-old children who have a problem falling asleep also display a “higher aggressiveness score”, note the scientists.
Could sleep orders reduce chair-throwing episodes in the classroom? Should Public Health conduct information campaigns on sleep as it does with alcohol consumption, for example? Certainly, teachers and TES often use the word “disorganization” when talking about students, which includes irritability, hyperactivity, inattention, conduct disorder…
All parents know how overexcited a tired child is, but very few know the long-term effects of chronic sleep deficit in toddlers.
Research has shown that even transient sleep deprivation before the age of 3 leads to deficits in cognitive skills, or the ability to learn… around the age of 5-6 years. Poor quality sleep between 6 and 18 months is also associated with impaired language skills three or four years later. Hence the importance of thinking about naps in CPEs and daycare centers in order to adapt to the real needs of each child.
“Naps are THE big topic among scientists right now. The ideal is flexibility,” says Evelyne Touchette.
It is while sleeping that the brain builds a solid framework for the future.
Teenagers are not left out. Screens push back their sleep time, while classes start too early for their biological clock. From puberty to college, it’s hard to concentrate before 10 a.m.
“There is a link between lack of sleep, the behavioral level, the cognitive level and mental health,” reports researcher Evelyne Touchette. Exactly, we talk a lot about anxiety among adolescents. However, sleep remains associated with laziness, even a brake on productivity.
food
“Each year, each person ingests a dry tablespoon of pesticides, herbicides and insecticides. That’s a lot! The link between toxins and neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD, autism and learning disabilities has been very well documented.1in 2014”, explains the DD Pagani.
Food has changed to the point of affecting the intestinal microbiota, continues the scientist.
It’s not trivial: the microbiota (this group of billions of microorganisms) is nicknamed the second brain as it produces a large quantity of neurotransmitters essential for mental health and stress management, among other things.
The microbiota’s favorite food? Fibers, not very present in industrial foods.
The familiescrushed themns
The time spent in front of the screens, even if we have been talking about it for a long time, is “still not taken seriously”, deplores researcher Linda Pagani. We only have to look at the children in the restaurants who need a telephone to wait to be convinced of this. All these moments of passivity reduce the time to move, but also the time devoted to social interactions, so that the children “are no longer able to manage their emotions”.
For this expert, there is no doubt that family meals without screens are essential, especially for verbal stimulation and the development of effective communication with peers. It is not by watching a video on YouTube, as educational as it is, that one learns to deal adequately with the anger aroused by the cheeky comments of his big sister.
“Parents have physical availability, but not psychological availability. It’s terrible what screens have done to little children, laments the Dr Jean-Francois Chicoine. And I am someone who loves screens! »
The medicine moder
Miracles have been worked in hospitals to increase the survival rate of premature infants since the 1990s. But this advance in neonatal intensive care is often felt in the classroom: nearly 50% of extremely premature infants (26 weeks) or extremely low birth weight have developmental disabilities.
“Cognitive impairment, inattention, hyperactivity, internalized behavioral problems and socialization problems persist well beyond the preschool period and influence academic achievement later in childhood,” says the Canadian Pediatric Society. .
In Quebec, 8% of children have low birth weight, reports Dr.r Chiccoine.
The changesmoogleraphic
Since 1980, the average age of women at childbirth has increased from 25.4 years to 34.2 years. “The age of the parents is directly correlated with the number of problems that we have in the juvenile population. The genome [la matière génétique] is more fragile in older people,” explains Dr.D Linda Pagani. Generally, the age of the mother is close to that of the father, so that the effect of the advanced age of the parents is twofold on the genetic makeup of the children.
Who says older parent, says parent who has ingested more toxins during his life, since “the effect is cumulative”, adds the researcher.
Another demographic change is confusing the issue: the size of families. In the 1960s, women had an average of 4 children. In 2020, the female fertility rate fell to 1.4 children.
Children and teachers arrive in class unaccustomed to large groups, all the stimuli and dynamics that entails. This forces children to adapt. And for teachers, who no longer come from large families, managing a class is less obvious than in another era, raises Linda Pagani. This can play on tolerance, expectations, comfort.
High expectationsare and unitedforms
Society must revise its expectations of children, who are pushed to achieve good results and be effective in a fast-paced world, scientists insist. This increases anxiety, especially performance anxiety. “Teachers forgot something very important: not everyone learns at the same speed and it shouldn’t be personal,” says Dr.D Linda Pagani. Expectations are so uniform that the youngest in the classroom end up with false diagnoses of ADHD because their attention spans and maturity levels are less than those of the older ones.
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, PRESS ARCHIVES
The Dr Gilles Julien, social pediatrician and president and founder of the D Foundationr Julian
“No need to be learned at 3 or 4 years old!” “, launches the Dr Gilles Julian. Children should play to play, not to learn multiplication. Stop putting pressure on children, also pleads the Dr Chiccoine. “Not everyone has the capacity or the competence for university. »
Shooting the flower is not just useless. It can be damaging.
weaknesses ofns it cocoon
Pediatricians Gilles Julien and Jean-François Chicoine observe that children are weakened because their environment is not as secure and stable as in another era. The network around the parents no longer fulfills its protective role as much. And there are more stresses.
“Attachment and identity are the two drivers of optimal development,” explains Dr.r Julian. In daycares, children become attached, but the educators change all the time, so they no longer believe in attachment. Identity is found in the extended family and neighborhood. If you amputate these two motors, you end up with an inability to develop fully. »
Jean-François Chicoine adds that children need “a secure emotional base”, as much for their behavior as for their learning. When this is deficient, emotional stability is shaken.
Clearly, children are more anxious, sad, angry. It does not put them in a position to be educated.
Jean-François Chicoine, pediatrician
The pediatrician gives the example of the family nucleus which is now transformed according to the new unions of the parents. “Families are very complicated. For one in five children, parental separation will have a huge impact on their development. The more a child is worried, the less he concentrates and the less he regulates himself. »
Stability is also a set of clear rules and limits. Because it reassures the child, like a fence on the edge of a ravine. “There are a lot of behavioral problems, like the opposition. But if the supervision was tighter, more constant and more coherent, there wouldn’t be any. For me, it is neither a mental illness nor a neurodevelopmental disorder,” says child psychiatrist Annie Loiseau.
Neuropsychologist Benoît Hammarrenger agrees. Family dynamics are often at the root of a child’s difficulties, he observes. “Difficult, opposing, aggressive, impolite behavior at school often starts at home. Respect for authority, discipline, accepting frustrations and receiving comments, it starts in the interaction with parents. This is where we are going to retool the parents to settle this. »