Sleep

Every night we go to our beds to engage in "the other half" of our lives. Most of the time we think very little about it, with each person having his or her own routine. Ten years ago when I went to bed at night, there was no routine. I collapsed on top of the covers, still fully clothed, from sheer exhaustion. Now, I agonize each night over maintaining a bed-time routine for my children that includes a bath and brushing their teeth, as I have heard that this will help them sleep better. However, my eleven-year old son has already decided to reject this idea, going to bed in whatever he has been wearing such as jeans or even his baseball slide shorts.
I recently heard on the news (Fox, of course) that Americans sleep less than the rest of the world and work longer hours because we view sleep as laziness. I have no doubt that this is true since I know very few people who actually work 40 hours or less a week, and I read every Sunday how my friends on Facebook revel in the extra couple of hours' sleep they get on Sunday morning. It's ironic that they post this news of their laziness by 8:00 in the morning. I've noticed in the past couple of years that the number of advertisements for sleep-aids has gone up quite a bit. My son's baseball coaches plan practices that last well past 10:00 at night and some that have started as early as 8:00 in the morning. We have become obsessed with staying up as much as possible.
We are the first society to do this, though. The ancient Greeks believed that a son of Apollo, with a ridiculously long and very Greek name I might add, would visit you in your sleep to heal your body of any ailments. The ancient Hebrews believed that God appeared to them and gave them wisdom in their sleep. "God grants sleep to those he loves." (Psalm 127:2) In the middle ages, people believed that sleep was their window into the spiritual world. It was possible for them to be visited by holy or demonic spirits. My theory is that this was a compromise belief that stemmed from previous cultures' conflicting views of either being visited by a deity or being able to leave one's body to go visit a deity. Sigmund Freud decided that all of this was a bunch of bologna, and that during your sleep you revealed "the royal road to the unconscious." I've read a little of his studies on dreams and sleep. I'm certainly no expert but I read enough to figure out that I don't quite buy it. I like Carl Jung's theories a little better; he believed that our dreams, and thus our sleep, were a way of us wishing and hoping in order to settle our own emotional and mental conflicts. Has anyone ever told you that you were "dreaming" when you said that you wished for something very extraordinary? That's a Jung theory. In the 1950's all the scientists began not just studying the dreams but the bodies reaction to the sleep itself, the effects of certain depths of sleep, and how our physical was changing our dreaming.
So, if for centuries we have valued the power of sleep so much, why are we not getting in more of it now? Over 74% of Americans are sleep deprived, with the average night's sleep being only 6.9 hours. Statistics show that a parent with an infant automatically loses one hour of sleep a night. As a parent, that is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard; it is at least two hours of lost sleep a night. According to CNN ten years ago, sleep deprivation was the number one health related problem in the U.S. When you are sleep deprived your body shuts down. You actually shorten your life, are more susceptible to illness, and kill brain cells. I think we don't sleep because of our immaturity. Yep, you read that right. When I was a kid I wanted to stay up all night because I was convinced that my parents watched the very best shows after I went to bed. I just knew they were having a great big party with lots of fun without me! Now as a parent, I know just how true this is. I get to watch the good shows and have a glass of wine after my kids go to bed. It's great! It is totally worth having to work, pay bills, and shave my legs. I know it sounds crazy that I would rather watch another re-run of Law and Order than get the sleep that my body needs, but I guess I just haven't completely grown up yet.