How much sleep kids need and why parents should stop forcing them to have longer

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

Nobody talks about sleep more than parents, most commonly a lack of it. From those early days of night feeds, to toddler tantrums, night terrors and everything else that bedtime with little ones brings, it often feels like you'll never have a full night of shut-eye again.

But one parenting expert says mums and dads can often get too hung up on how much sleep their children are getting - and try to force them to have more than they need. Read more: Join the FREE Manchester Evening News WhatsApp community Sarah Ockwell-Smith, author of The Gentle Sleep Book, says: "One of the major issues parents of children from 2-8yrs face is that they try to get their children to have more sleep than they really need." If this happens, she says 'one or more of the following problems occurs'.... "Despite warnings of overtiredness, in my opinion, more parents in Western culture struggle with undertiredness," Sarah recently said on social media. "If children don't need as much sleep as their parents are trying to get them to have it causes stress and their body secretes cortisol.

This in turn inhibits melatonin - the hormone of sleep and therefore sleep becomes disjointed and disrupted." As for how much sleep they actually need, she said each child is different, so 'whatever they uniquely need - which will be different from all other children'.

She does however give a rough guide, but stresses it is 'a range' and does not apply to every child. "Some will need a lot more, some will need a lot less," she said. "As children grow they clearly need less sleep, initially this occurs when they drop naps.