How Much Sleep Do Children Need?
The babies are so cute when they sleep, and for some mothers, they are a blessing because they can get that long awaited and deserved rest. However, do you know how much sleep it is required for your child to be healthy and to grow nicely?
Making the child to respect the sleeping schedule is one of the biggest challenges of a young mother. Warm baths, fluffy pajamas and reading stories are the “weapons” of a parent. Those will enter in routine, becoming something like a family tradition.
How much sleep is required by a child?
It depends on many factors, such as the age, the weight and the health of the child, but there are some generally agreed intervals:
Age Duration of sleep
Newborn 16 -18 hours a day
3 weeks 15 – 18 hours a day
6 weeks 15 – 16 hours a day
4 months 9 – 12 ore, hours, and two naps of 2-3 hours
6 months 10 – 11 hours and two naps
The average duration of required sleep during the day decreases, while the one necessary during the night increases. Eventually, when the child is 3-4 years old, he or she needs 10 hours a day for sleeping, and another nap of 2-3 hours.
However, those intervals vary. There are children needing 15-16 hours of sleep even at 6 months, and there is nothing wrong with that. Sleeping longer is usually not a problem, but sleeping less might be. If a child does not sleep enough, it will be harder for him the notions and knowledge that are so necessary at those ages.
Changing the sleeping behavior
For the first weeks of his life, the child can’t stay up longer than 3-4 hours. When the child is awake longer, it usually happen in late afternoons, which is a blessing for the fathers that just come from work, and they have the time to play with the child. At six months, almost all the children sleep in 2-3 sessions, and 50 % of children need to sleep more than two times during the day, besides the long night sleep.
It is not the case to believe the legends saying that the boys sleep less than girls, because studies show that this is not true. There are not major differences between the length of sleeping for boys and girls until the age of 3.
Realistic Expectancy
The stepping stone for a parent is the first night in which the child is awake, and in which he does not want to sleep for two or even three hours. Mothers have a shock thinking that this is going to be their lives for the next years. Later, you will wake up just to see how the child is doing.
Some parents have children that sleep well for the first three months, while others try to convince their children to sleep even when they are older. So, when would the child sleep all night long?
Usually, the sleeping periods are normalized when the child is six months old. Until then, you can’t hope for the child to sleep less. Hope this answers your question on how much sleep children need.
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