6 major sleep mistakes parents make
Posted: April 24, 2009
You’ll all rest easier once you learn how to avoid the most common pitfalls.
By Ziba Kashef
GETTING YOUNG CHILDREN TO SLEEP – and stay asleep – is one of the most daunting tasks of parenthood. Even parents of “good” sleepers face nap time or bedtime struggles occasionally. In fact, up to 40 percent of children suffer from some sort of sleep problem.
Our experts have identified six common mistakes parents make when it comes to their kids’ getting good shut-eye. But the good news is, those mistakes can be turned around without too much trouble. Children’s sleep experts and veteran parents alike confirm that simple changes to sleep routines and environments can make a big difference in preventing or correcting common sleep difficulties.
Mistake 1: Putting children to bed too late
Kids sleep less these days than their parents did growing up. “In infancy and throughout early adolescence, children today get less sleep than they did in the mid ’70s and ’80s,” says Marc Weissbluth, pediatrician and author of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. One study found that 2-year-olds now get 40 minutes less sleep than 2-year-olds a generation ago or two ago. The result of later bedtimes, Weissbluth says, is more bedtime battles, nap difficulties, and night waking.
Maybe you don’t have your infant or toddler on a regular sleep schedule or you don’t have much time with her after work, so you keep her up a little later to play. “Letting children go to sleep too late as babies and toddlers creates overfatigue,” says social worker Jill Spivack, cocreator of The Sleepeasy Solution: The Exhausted Parent’s Guide to Getting Your Child to Sleep from Birth to Age 5. “When they become overtired, they have a harder time falling asleep and staying asleep, and they get up earlier than if they were put down at an appropriate time.”
In preschool and elementary school, a jam-packed schedule with multiple sports or after-school activities may cut into sleep time. “A lot of kids have too much to do,” says Jodi Mindell, associate director of the Sleep Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and coauthor with Judith Owens of Take Charge of Your Child’s Sleep.
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April 30, 2009 at 6:42 pm