Why you shouldn’t worry a nap will stop your child sleeping at night
It is believed that naps are important for the development of the early brain
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A short nap during the day seems to increase the overall quantity of sleep that a young child receives, rather than being a serious threat to nightships.
Babies and young children generally take a nap during the day, a habit linked to the development of early memories. This trend generally stops between ages about 3 and 5 years old, but timing varies, leaving many uncertain parents to know if their child should be drowned during the day or not.
In France, where children start a preschool form at 3 years old, this presents a dilemma to find out if the staff should let them take the nap. “Although NAPs are widely recognized as having a positive effect on cognitive development, some parents and teachers fear that the nap during the day will be interfered with night sleep or reduces precious learning time,” explains Stéphanie Mazza at the University of Lyon in France.
To see if the naps disturb night sleep significantly, Mazza and his colleagues have given sleep trackers brought to the wrist at 85 children aged 2 to 5 years of six French nursery schools and measured their sleep on an average of 7.8 days.
These data, combined with sleep newspapers filled with parents, revealed that an increase in the 1 hour nap was linked to 13.6 minutes of sleep less at night, on average, and pushed the time to which the child fell asleep at night by 6.4 minutes. The days when children took a nap, their overall sleep time throughout the day increased by 45 minutes.
“The naps have led to a significant increase in total daily sleep time, bringing children closer to the international sleep duration recommended for a period of 24 hours,” said Mazza. The World Health Organization recommends that children of this age sleep from 10 to 13 hours a day.
“Parents should not worry if their child still needs a nap before the age of 6,” said Mazza. “Our data suggests that nap helps increase global sleep, even if it means a little to sleep slightly later. Rather than considering naps as disruptive, they must be recognized as a precious source of rest, especially when children are exposed to stimulating environments. ”
“For me, that said – if they can take a nap, let them take a nap,” said Rebecca Spencer at the University of Massachusetts, Amhurst. However, given that sleeping periods in early childhood can vary between countries, it says that more work must be done to understand how much these results are widely applicable.
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