Children's and teenagers' sleep: a guide for parents

This guide is psychoeducational content. It does not replace a consultation. If your baby has pauses in breathing, turns blue, very pale or floppy, or is struggling to breathe, call the emergency services in your country immediately. Do the same if your child has a seizure with stiffness or jerking for the first time, if it lasts more than five minutes, or if they do not come round afterwards. If your child or teenager talks about dying, says everything would be simpler if they were no longer here, or is harming themselves, do not leave them alone and get help the same day; in immediate danger, call the emergency services. Until the age of one, a baby sleeps on their back, in their own cot, with no pillow, duvet or cot bumper: section 7 sets out these rules. No melatonin and no sleeping medicine should be given to a child without medical advice. Allow fifty-five minutes to read.

1. Before you begin

It is twenty to ten at night. You have read two stories, then a third, "the last one". Since then Lina, who is three, has asked for water, then the toilet, then the cuddly toy that fell behind the bed, then you. You have gone back into her room five times. You already know she will turn up in your bed at around two.

Or it is Hugo, fifteen. At one in the morning, a strip of blue light still shows under his door. In the morning it takes three trips to his room and a rising voice to get him up. You wonder whether he is lazy, whether he is depressed, or whether it all comes down to the phone.

You are tired, and the advice you have read contradicts itself.

Three things, straight away.

A child who sleeps badly is not a difficult child, and their parents have not failed. Falling asleep without help, getting back to sleep after waking, agreeing to let go of the day: all of this is learned, at very different paces from one child to the next. In a large study in Quebec, more than one child in three was still waking often at night at two and a half.

The methods that help young children sleep better are well known, and they have shown no harmful effects. Children followed up to the age of six bore no trace of them. Some are gentle, others quicker; the best one is the one you can keep up.

The teenager who cannot fall asleep before midnight is not simply undisciplined. At puberty, the body clock shifts later into the evening. Screens and school timetables make this shift worse; they do not create it.

Who this guide is for

For you if your child, from about six months old, will only fall asleep with you, wakes several times a night, or turns every bedtime into a negotiation.

For you if your child is frightened in the evening, has nightmares, screams in their sleep or wanders about at night.

For you if your teenager goes to bed later and later, can no longer get up, or says they cannot sleep.

For you if your child has ADHD or autism and the nights have become a job that is never finished. And for you, if you are the teenager reading these lines: sections 13 to 16 concern you directly.

2. How much sleep, at what age

In 2016, a panel of experts convened by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the US professional body for sleep medicine, reviewed more than eight hundred publications to set these durations. The US National Sleep Foundation and, for children under five, the World Health Organization propose very similar ranges.

Age	Recommended sleep per twenty-four hours
4 to 12 months	12 to 16 hours, including naps
1 to 2 years	11 to 14 hours, including naps
3 to 5 years	10 to 13 hours, including naps
6 to 12 years	9 to 12 hours
13 to 18 years	8 to 10 hours

A range, not a target

Needs vary from one child to another. A four-year-old girl who sleeps ten and a half hours and wakes up in a good mood has no debt to make up. The table is there to spot a clear and lasting gap: an eight-year-old who sleeps seven hours, a teenager who sleeps six.

Look at the day more than the night. Does your child wake up more or less on their own? Do they fall asleep on every car journey? Do they sleep much more during the holidays? A gap of several hours usually points to a shortfall during the week.

What lack of sleep does

A meta-analysis, that is, a synthesis that pools the results of many studies, brought together 86 studies and almost 36,000 children aged five to twelve: shorter sleep went with more behavioural difficulties and slightly poorer school results. The links were modest, and they are associations, not proof of cause and effect. The 2016 expert panel links regularly insufficient sleep with more accidents and more depression in children and, in teenagers, with more self-harm, more suicidal thoughts and more suicide attempts.

In the United States, in 2015, almost three in four high school students said they slept less than eight hours on school nights.

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