STI: Sleep like a baby? Not any more

Mar 31, 2004

Sleep like a baby? Not any more

NEW YORK - That teenagers are often so sleep-deprived they can barely crawl out of bed in the morning is not news. But researchers have found that these days, even many babies no longer sleep like a baby.

Infants average almost 90 minutes less sleep a day than the 14-hour minimum doctors re- commend, according to a survey of more than 1,400 parents and others who care for children 10 and younger. The results were released yesterday.

The poll, by the National Sleep Foundation, an organisation that promotes education and research on sleep, also found that toddlers get on average at least two hours a week less and preschoolers more than four hours less than the minimum amount they need.

Sleep experts recommend 12 to 14 hours a day for children 12 to 35 months old and 11 to 13 hours for preschoolers.

The new poll is believed to be the largest to examine the sleep habits of small children.

'We've suspected that they are not getting enough sleep, but this is the first time we're really showing it,' said Dr Jodi Mindell, a professor of psychology at St Joseph's University in Philadelphia and a member of the sleep foundation's board.

Dr Mindell and other sleep experts say young children who do not sleep enough do not function as well as their better-rested classmates at school and their relationships with family and friends suffer.

Infants and toddlers also need enough sleep to remain alert and open to the world around them, they say.

Dr Lewis Kass, a paediatrician and the director of the sleep disorders centre at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx, said the findings were significant because they provided firm data for a phenomenon familiar to paediatricians.

In many families, he said, even small children take part in so many activities that their sleep patterns are disrupted.

Paediatricians do not pay enough attention to the issue, according to the poll, with 52 per cent of parents reporting that their children's doctors do not ask about sleep habits.

Some parents also lose as many as 200 hours of sleep a year because of their children's poor sleeping patterns, the survey found.

It found that 69 per cent of young children experienced sleep-related problems such as having trouble falling asleep, heavy snoring, waking up at night, nightmares and restless legs syndrome, which involves unpleasant sensations in the legs, like itching and tingling.

Experts say they sense that small children get less sleep and have more sleeping problems than they did in the past but admit they have little evidence.

Most attribute the problem to the current patterns of daily life.

'This is a warning that we need to pay as much attention to the sleeping half of children's lives as the waking half,' said Dr Mindell.  \-- New York Times