Our organism need to rest. As eating satisfy the need of energy, sleeping reinvigorate our body from physical and mental efforts. When we sleep we relax our mind and our muscles, our heart frequency and breathing reduce.
When talking about sleeping, we have to consider two factors: quality and quantity. According to the American National Sleep Foundation (http://www.sleephealthjournal.org/), infants and child needs more hours of sleep (see the chart we prepared for you). Regarding the quality of sleep, this is more difficult to establish: it depends on how many time children wake up during their sleep and on potential nightmares. In general, the more the sleep is continuous, the better.
Bad sleep may lead to reduced capacity of concentration, thus poor school performance for our children. Moreover, challenging behavior of the children may arise, not to confuse with a healthy vivacity.
Two useful tips for a better sleep: (i) avoid heavy dinners and not just before sleeping time (give at least 2 hours for proper digestion); (ii) make your children relaxed, talk with them, play with them, do not isolate them with smartphones and videogames.
So, guess it’s time for a good sleep now! Zzzzzz…
Marco