Sleep problems are among the commonest concerns that parents have with their children. About one in four of all children are said to have sleep problems at some stage. Some have difficulty in getting to sleep, others in staying asleep, while others have their sleep interrupted by nightmares or night terrors. All children, like adults, need adequate sleep to replenish energy. Insufficient or interrupted sleep has a deleterious effect on children at any age. Children’s sleep problems also have an impact on the rest of the family and they create an enormous amount of stress for parents, whose own sleep is often interrupted.
There is a great deal of individual variation in sleep patterns and requirements at all ages. What seems sufficient for one child is too little for another. All babies, children and adults go through specific sleep cycles. They move systematically from deep sleep to light sleep to REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. This cycle repeats itself about five times in 8 hours of sleep. Dreaming takes place in REM sleep, which seems to last about 10-20 minutes at a time.
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