Is Sleep as Important as Diet?

You probably already know that my answer to this question is a big resounding YES! I don’t believe that one is more important than the other, they are both equally important to ensuring your little one has the best opportunity to thrive. Let me tell you why!

Just as a healthy, well balanced diet is essential to your little one’s well being, healthy sleep is just as essential. A healthy diet is important to overall health, energy, brain function, and healthy growth. Quality sleep is also important to all these essential functions for our children.

Sure, you may have a day or two where you splurge and eat mainly unhealthy choices and it won’t have major impacts on your overall health and behaviour functions, but weeks, months, or years of unhealthy diet choices can have huge impacts for ourselves and our little ones. The same is true for sleep; a day or two of poor quality sleep won’t have major impacts on our overall health but weeks, months, and years of unhealthy sleep will. Without quality, consolidated sleep on a consistent basis you can expect issues with behaviour, focus, metabolism, and growth, just to name a few.

With all the health and behavioural risks associated to poor quality sleep, it seems obvious to me that this vital life function should be a priority for parents, just as much as a healthy diet is.  The thing that concerns me is that it often isn’t (and hey, I’m guilty of it too). I think a major contributor to this is that there isn’t the same level of knowledge, support, and resources for educating parents on the benefits of sleep, as there are for educating parents on healthy diet choices.  When it comes to diet, there seems to be ample resources and supports (doctors, dieticians, family/friend support) for parents to learn about healthy food choices and how to implement them into their child’s life. But when it comes to resources for sleep there simply aren’t many as easily accessible. It is not uncommon for new parents to hear from their doctor, family, fellow parents, or even that nosey neighbour, things like:

“Babies will sleep eventually, don’t force it.”

“It’s normal! Babies just don’t sleep.”

“Follow your baby’s lead. They know how much sleep they need.”

“My child is six and still wakes in the night, you’ll get used to it.”

New parents and even experienced parents don’t think twice about this “reassurance” from others because they are unaware of any viable solutions. I’m sure these statements are offered to simply reassure parents that they are not alone in having sleep struggles with their littles ones but imagine if these same types of statements were applied to your baby’s diet.

“Don’t force it! Your baby knows what is healthy to eat.”

“It’s completely normal for your baby to only eat ice cream.”

“Your baby knows when to eat, scheduled mealtimes are unnecessary.”

“My child is six and still eats four times in the night, you’ll get used to it.”

If someone said these things to you, you would immediately think they were bogus and certainly wouldn’t accept them as advice for your child. So, let’s not allow ourselves (or others) to brush off sleep as a low priority in the early weeks, months, and years of life!

At the end of the day, as parents, all we want for our kids is for them to live healthy, happy lives. Ensuring your child gets quality sleep, along with a healthy diet, will absolutely go a long way in the overall health of your child.