Question: How Much Sleep Do Kids Need?
How much sleep do kids really need? I'm not sure that my four-year-old son is getting enough rest. He seems to be tired quite often, and he falls apart each night at the dinner table. Sometimes he refuses to eat what I'm serving, and then he crumbles into a fiery temper tantrum. I try to put him to bed by 8:30 p.m., but he's often still awake at 9:00 or 9:30. What should I do? He's usually up by 6:00 a.m.
Answer:
First of all, the situation you describe is very common. The hours between dinner and bedtime include some of the most stressful moments of the day. It's hard to accomplish all that you need to do, and get the kids to bed "on time." However, your son's behavior may suggest that he needs more sleep than he's currently getting.
The American Academy of Pediatrics Guide to Your Child's Sleep provides some helpful guidelines regarding just how much sleep children need at different stages in their development. Keep in mind that these numbers reflect total sleep hours in a 24-hour period. So if your son still naps, you'll need to take that into account when you add up his typical sleep hours.
Between Birth-Six Months, children need 16-20 hours
Between Six-Twelve Months, children need 14-15 hours
Between Ages 1-3, children need 10-13 hours
Between Ages 3-10, children need 10-12 hours
Between Ages 11-12, children need about 10 hours
Teenagers need about 9 hours of sleep per night
If those numbers are surprising, you're not alone. As adults, we're accustomed to needing 7-9 hours of sleep, and we're often forced to get by with far less. As a result, it might be tempting to think that our kids have similar sleep requirements, or that they should be able to cope fairly well with a few skipped hours here and there. However, kids who are regularly sleep deprived will exhibit some pretty difficult behaviors. They display frequent irritability, overreact emotionally, have difficulty concentrating, forget easily, wake often during the night, and may even display hyperactive behaviors.
The best thing you can do is simply move your child's bedtime up. This may sound impossible at first, but by moving his entire bedtime routine up half an hour, you'll help him associate bedtime with an earlier time. In fact, you may be surprised to find that he goes to sleep easily and sleeps through the night more regularly when he is well-rested.
References:1Cohen, George J., M.D., F.A.A.P. (Ed.). (1999). American Academy of Pediatrics Guide to Your Child’s Sleep. New York: Villard.More Single Parents Q&A
