Author Bio:

Ethan Wright is a health enthusiast who believes every great day begins with a good night sleep. He is currently a researcher and writer for Bedding Stock, an online retailer of gel memory foam mattress in the USA. When not wearing his writing hat, you will see him traveling to places with his journal.

Getting your kids to sleep is a stressful chore that parents often face. Training your child to form healthy sleep habits is challenging, but necessary for their growth and development.

How Much Sleep Does My Child Need?

The National Sleep Foundation updated their recommended sleep duration guidelines for all age groups in 2015 based on an expert panel's comprehensive review of published scientific studies on sleep and health. Ranges are given instead of a hard number for each age group. The experts acknowledge that there is individual variability and the range is intended to be a starting point for individuals to discuss sleep with their healthcare providers.

25-30 percent of children suffer from some form of sleep disturbance such as sleep apnea, narcolepsy, sleepwalking, bed wetting or night terrors. 2-3 percent of children have sleep apnea. While many childhood sleep issues are not cause for concern, a disturbance that reduces your child’s quality or quantity of sleep on a regular basis can lead to more serious problems including:

With the increased importance medical and public health officials are placing on quality sleep, more doctors are recommending that their child patients undergo a sleep study to diagnose or rule out a sleep disorder.  

In a previous post, we described the most common sleep disorders affecting children, along with their symptoms. In this post, we explain what you and your child should expect if your doctor recommends a sleep study.

Age and sleep are closely related, and many people will notice a significant decline in the quality of sleep as they grow older. According the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School, sleep patterns change throughout life, and for most of us, the amount of time we spend sleeping each day slowly decreases as we age.

It is the time of the year when kids don their best spooky apparel and go out for some mischief and sweets.

With all this excitement, it could be hard for your kids to keep their sleep.

We have previously posted on two sleeping problems that can be prevented with the right approach:

NIGHTMARES, which can be caused by something as minor as a stimulating bedtime snack to the more serious sleep disorders, such as restless leg syndrome and sleep apnea. Read the article to find out more about the causes and ways of addressing nightmares.

SLEEP PARALYSIS - a condition in which a person is mentally conscious but physically unable to move. This can be accompanied by the spooky feeling that there is someone else in the room - sure to raise some hairs on your little one! Read on to find out ways to help prevent sleep paralysis.

So how do you keep your kids from having sleep problems around Halloween? Here are some important tips.

The past week, we have been running a series of blog posts on how sleep affects different groups of people: namely, men and women. But what about the younger sleepers among us? 

Healthy sleep may be even more important for children and toddlers than for grown adults. Kids and teens need more sleep (depending on the age, sometimes a lot more sleep) than adults. Plus, at this age, sleep quality and quantity can influence kids' emotional and mental development (for example, toddlers who skip naps are proven to be less happy and engaged than their well-rested counterparts. 

So if you're the parent of a kid or teen, here are our top 3 tips about children and sleep. 

The start of another school year is just around the corner! Transitioning from the freedom of the summer to a rigid school year schedule can be tough, especially when it comes to sleep. But research suggests that making sure your children get the rest they need is more important than ever while school is in session. In fact, children who get adequate amounts of sleep actually perform better academically than sleep-deprived children. 

A significant upside of modern technology is that information about health and medical conditions (like the information found on this blog!) is available to anyone, without having to see a doctor. Now, a new app created by doctors at a London hospital attempts to take this one step further. Their new smartphone app attamps to track the sleep habits of children and teens and then gives personalized tips on what the kids and parents can do to improve those sleep patterns. 

Does your child toss and turn frequently during the night? Does he or she often wake up with headaches or a dry throat, or exhibit problematic behavior during the day? If so, you might not be aware that your child could be suffering from the sleep disorder obstructive sleep apnea.

Many parents might never consider that their children have OSA because of the misleading stereotype of a sleep apnea patient as a middle-aged man. In fact, an estimated 2-3% of children suffer from childhood sleep apnea. However, the causes—and, thus, the treatment—for kids can be very different than for adults. Read on to learn how to recognize your child’s symptoms, and what you can do to return them to a peaceful and restful night’s sleep.

If you’ve been trying to conceive a child without success, no doubt you’ve heard much advice regarding how to increase your chances: weight control, cutting down on alcohol and caffeine, or using an ovulation calendar, to name a few. But there’s another, frequently overlooked barrier to conception: sleep deprivation or a sleep disorder in either the male or the female. And such disorders are common. Consider the following statistics: