How should parents approach their childs sleep?
In getting a child to sleep well at night, the first thing is to understand the nature of sleep, the development of sleep in children and what should normally happen at each age. If a child is having sleep problems, try to understand all the reasons why. Once the reasons are identified, you can design a solution. If it’s simply an issue of an improper schedule, then adjusting the schedule should be all that’s necessary. If it’s an issue of a young child being overfed at night, then feeding should be cut back. There may be several ways to resolve any problem. Some work better for one family or fit better with that family’s philosophy than do others. Do some children sleep more than others? Yes, but the range in sleep times is probably narrower than a lot of people think. Most children are within a two-hour window of total sleep time. And changes in sleep requirements are very gradual, only going from about 12 hours at 6 months to about 9 hours at the end of adolescence. What are the mos
