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Between the ages of 2 and 6, your child's sleep needs will change but are still important. Three-year-olds need 12 to 13 hours of sleep a day. Six-year-olds need 10 to 11 hours of sleep a day. A good indicator of whether your child is getting enough sleep and at the right time is how easily he or she wakes up in the morning: your child should wake up without difficulty when it's time to go to school. If not, you should review your child's schedule.
What is the purpose of sleep? Why is it so important for my child?
Getting a good night's sleep has important consequences for your daily health:
Sleep is essential for a child's brain development.
It regulates the production of several hormones: growth hormone, but also cortisol and insulin, the appetite hormones. Children who do not sleep enough snack more and are hungrier.
It consolidates the information memorised during wakefulness and promotes recent learning. A person who falls asleep on a newly learned task improves his or her memory by 30%.
It is associated with a better immune response with likely consequences for susceptibility to infection.
How can we help them sleep well and get quality sleep?
Although children need a good night's sleep, and usually naps as well, they do not always want to go to bed and do not fall asleep easily. Here are a few tips to help them get the right number of hours of sleep:
Regularity is a key factor for good sleep. Regular bedtimes and wake-up times from one day to the next during the week, with very little (if any!) difference at weekends and during holidays.
Get out and about. Going out and being exposed to natural light promotes sleep because it informs the biological clock of the day's progress. On the contrary, avoid exposure to screens in the hours before bedtime. The use of television, tablets and phones is associated with difficulty in falling asleep, waking up at night and poor sleep quality.
Rituals are all the habits that are repeated every evening at bedtime, always in the same order. They reassure the child at this particular moment of transition from wakefulness to sleep, which is also a moment of separation from parents. This can be an anxious time. The little story, the cuddle, the song or the music box, but also reassuring objects such as the child's favourite cuddly toy or blanket, are the necessary steps to prepare the child for sleep. This time should be calm and reassuring.
Teach your child to fall asleep alone. This is a fundamental learning process for his nights (and yours) because a child who cannot fall asleep on his own does not know how to go back to sleep on his own if he wakes up at night.
If your child has difficulty sleeping, do not hesitate to discuss this with your child's paediatrician.
You can also consult these articles available on the ameli.fr website:
Paula Buswell