What does staying up one-hour late three nights in a row mean for a school age child? A sleepy 6th grader performs in school like a 4th grader. That’s right – the loss of an hour of sleep for three nights can cause the loss of two years of cognitive development in a child! Beyond school performance, sleep deprivation affects children’s emotional stability – sleep deprived kids are less able to recall positive memories compared to depressive ones. Kids who receive less than eight hours of sleep in a night are 300% more likely to be obese than kids getting ten hours of shut-eye. Learn what every must parent know about how sleep (or the lack thereof) affects our kids as we speak to Dr. Monique LeBourgeois, who studies how sleep affects children at The University of Colorado. Find out how much sleep your child needs at different stages of life, what impact the lack of sleep has on kids, and how we can help our kids get more of the sleep they desperately need!