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I’m sorry you’re going through this, but I’m slightly taken aback by this comment because this isn’t a common feature of having older children. The only parents I know having sleep deprivation problems have very young children. I have a lot of parent friends and I’ve never heard anyone claim that sleep deprivation continued until older ages, let alone that it’s common.
I went through a really rough period because of the lack of sleep. I noticed that hydration during that period was also challenging, so I wonder if this is related to the brain shrink effect.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323595
For all the difficulties, children are rejuvenating and fun and provide purpose to life.
Wonder if these changes are more like jettisoning luxuries rather than getting dumber.
Childlike curiosity is slightly contagious. It’s also fun to experience it by proxy through your kids seeing things for the first time.
When you say you don't daydream, you mean you don't think about non task related things? How do you experience daydreams? Is it a nonvoluntary thing or is it more like actually going to sleep - deliberately entering a contemplative state where your mind wanders?
("This is your brain on kids!")
> Although cortical reductions sometimes reflect a process of neurodegeneration, they can also be a sign of refinement and specialization of neural circuits. Adolescence, for instance, is a life period characterized by the continued elimination of redundant synapses (i.e. synaptic pruning) which parallels cognitive and emotional development (Selemon 2013). In the context of the transition to parent-hood, several examples across human and non-human mammals show functional improvements after reductions in brain markers (Pawluski et al. 2022).
And:
> Although we found converging evidence of cortical reductions across the two samples, a number of divergent findings also emerged. First, when disentangling the cortical volume reduction, Californian fathers displayed significant reductions in area and Spanish fathers in thickness. Changes in the area may reflect changes in the number of cells located between radial columns of the brain, while changes in thickness may reflect changes in the number of cells within ontogenic columns (Petanjek et al. 2011). Secondly, the volume of the dorsal attentional network, which supports goal-directed attention, was significantly reduced in Spanish fathers, while it did not show significant changes in Californian fathers. Combined with the default mode network, this network may control sustained attention (Spreng et al. 2010, 2013), a behavior that is often required during childrearing. It is possible that these inconsistent results at the statistical level may be due to the different scan timing windows or to cultural or behavioral differences. For example, due to more generous paternity leave policies in Spain
1: https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/33/7/4156/6691667
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47986349