Getting good sleep helps to enhance brain tissues and alter brain circuits known as synapses. Deep sleep in children also increases the blood supply to all muscles and aids in repairing tissues. It also strengthens their immune system.

Problems Resulting From a Lack of Deep Sleep in Children

There are several issues which are triggered by a lack of deep sleep in children. Some prominent ones are listed below:

1. Behavioral Issues

If your child has a poor sleep, their general behavior is likely to change; they become irritable, and experience increased mood swings. A child who hasn’t taken enough sleep will typically be less happy, and more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression. If a child acts irritable due to lack of sleep, then he will adopt this behavior in the future and repeat the pattern. It will also affect their social relationships in the future.

2. Injuries and Hypertension

If your child is not getting enough sleep, then it may cause hypertension, diabetes, and depression. It may also cause other health problems, which are likely to worsen with age.

3.

Many children wake up when during their sleep. Night waking is a problem caused by insufficient sleep and an inability to get back to sleep once awake. Having disturbed sleep will lead to other issues like:

• Heart complications
• Sleepwalking
• Night terrors

Regular Sleep Cycles in Children

Sleep is no less important than food or hydration in the lives of children. Many parents are not aware of regular sleep cycles in children. Light, dark, and circadian rhythms constitute a sleep cycle. Young children take time to develop their sleep patterns.

Babies need a lot of sleep, and their sleep patterns evolve with age. In very young children, regular sleep cycles repeat every 90-100 minutes. There are two primary sleep cycles:

• REM sleep, or light sleep
• Non-REM sleep, or deep sleep

REM and non-REM are the two phases of sleep that repeat multiple times; each stage can last for 45 to 60 minutes in kids and a maximum of 90 minutes in adults. Deep or Non-REM makes up to 75% of sleep time and increases the blood supply. During light or REM sleep, (which constitutes 25% of sleep time) the brain remains active, and the heart rate stays irregular.

Tips for Having a Deep Sleep

American Academy of Pediatrics gives multiple guidelines and encourages parents to make sure that their children develop good sleeping habits from the start. It is imperative to use the following tips to induce deep sleep in children to improve their overall health:

A regular bedtime routine is vital for infants and toddlers. The same sleeping and waking time helps your child to feel relaxed. Parents must set the perfect bedtime for their child so that he/she will become sleepy on time.

2. Monitor Screen Time

There must be a specified time limit for TV, computers, tablets, and phones, especially at night. To prevent sleep disruption, parents should turn off all screens at least 60 minutes before bedtime.

3. Create a Sleepy Environment

You can dim the lights and refrain from filling your child’s bed with toys. It’s imperative to keep your child’s bed a relaxing place to sleep rather than a playing area.

4.

Parents should make sure that their child has taken a sufficient evening meal at least 3 hours before going to bed. Feeling starving or too full may result in an uncomfortable sleep; it will make it harder for them to experience deep sleep.

5. Eat the Right Amount of Food

Use of comfortable mattress and pillows are essential for getting a good night’s sleep.

6. Take Time to Unwind Mentally

School-age kids usually need time to relax mentally and physically before going to bed. You can help your children to establish a relaxing routine that they can follow every night. They can take out a few minutes for simple stretching, drink a warm glass of milk, talk about their day, or read a bedtime story.

7. Avoid Caffeine Before Bedtime

Caffeine is not suitable for children. Parents should avoid giving fizzy drinks or caffeine in any form; the same is true for any beverage that contains a lot of sugar.

8. Reduce Stress Before Bedtime

There is a hormone named cortisol that plays a significant role in sleep. When the stress level gets high, your child won’t be able to sleep deeply. So, bedtime activities must be in a calming environment; this will help in avoiding an excessive amount of cortisol in your child system.

Conslusion

Deep sleep is vital for children to ensure that they are alert and get proper emotional and mental development. Numerous studies have revealed that children who suffer from a lack of sleep face behavioral problems and learning difficulties. So, parents must invest sufficient time and effort in ensuring a consistent sleep pattern for their little ones.

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How Much Deep Sleep Do You Need?

If you are getting the recommended amount of slumber — seven to nine hours a night — you’re spending about one-third of your life asleep.

Although that may seem like a lot of time, your mind and body are very busy during that time, so that you can be productive, energetic, and healthy when you’re awake.

There are five stages of sleep that rotate between non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) and include drowsiness, light sleep, moderate to deep sleep, deepest sleep, and dreaming.

Experts have recommended that adults gets about 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. New research aims to identify not just how much total sleep you need — but also how much of each stage of sleep you need.

Sleep stages 1, 2, and REM consist of light sleep, while 3 and 4 comprise deep sleep.

During stage 1, you drift from being awake to being asleep. This is a light, NREM sleep that doesn’t last very long. You may start to relax and dream, but may also twitch as you transition into stage 2.

Stage 2 of the sleep cycle is still a light sleep, but you are drifting into a steadier sleep. Your breathing and heartbeat slow down, and your muscles relax. Your body temperature decreases, and your brain waves are less active.

In stage 3, you enter deep sleep, and stage 4 is the deepest sleep stage. During deep sleep, your breathing, heartbeat, body temperature, and brain waves reach their lowest levels. Your muscles are extremely relaxed, and you are most difficult to rouse.

Stage 4 is known as the healing stage, when tissue growth and repair take place, important hormones are released to do their jobs, and cellular energy is restored.

Your first REM cycle of the night begins about 90 minutes after you fall asleep and recurs every 90 minutes. Your eyes move around quickly behind your eyelids and your brainwaves look similar to those of someone who is awake. Your breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure rise to near-waking levels.

REM sleep, often referred to as stage 5, is when you are most likely to dream.

Your arms and legs become temporarily paralyzed during this stage to prevent you from physically acting out your dreams.

In healthy adults, about 13 to 23 percent of your sleep is deep sleep. So if you sleep for 8 hours a night, that’s roughly 62 to 110 minutes.

However, as you get older you require less deep sleep.

During deep sleep, a variety of functions take place in the mind and body:

• memories are consolidated
• learning and emotions process
• physical recovery occurs
• blood sugar levels and metabolism balance out
• the immune system is energized
• the brain detoxifies

Without deep sleep, these functions cannot take place and the symptoms of sleep deprivation kick in.

On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be any such thing as too much deep sleep.

Although there’s no official consensus on how much REM sleep you should get, dreaming is most common during this stage. Experts believe that dreaming helps you process emotions and solidify certain memories.

For most adults, REM takes up about 20 to 25 percent of sleep, and this seems to be healthy during average sleep cycles. However, sleep research is raising some interesting questions. One recent study suggested that higher amounts of REM sleep may be associated with depression. But don’t go making sudden changes in your sleep habits — it is not clear which is the cause and which is the effect.

How much light sleep do you need?

Although sleep scientists believe that light sleep is good for you, there is no minimum to strive for. Light sleep is usually the default stage, one that is nearly impossible to avoid if you are asleep at all.

Too much overall sleep on a regular basis, however, is linked to obesity, depression, pain, heart disease, and even increased risk of death.

How much deep and light sleep do children need?

Babies and children need more sleep than adults. Babies need the most, spending about 16 of every 24 hours asleep. Approximately 50 percent of their slumber is spent in the REM stage, while the other 50 percent is divided between stages 1 through 4 and NREM sleep that cycles between light and deep.

As children grow older, the amount of sleep they need varies:

• toddlers: 11 to 14 hours
• preschoolers: 10 to 13 hours
• school-aged children: 9 to 12 hours
• teens: 8 to 10 hours

With enough sleep that appears to be restful, it’s likely that the light, deep, and REM ratio is exactly where it should be in young people.

If they’re having trouble with falling asleep, staying asleep, or sleeping well, or if they are sleeping way too much for their age, children may be irritable, could have learning and memory problems, or may be more susceptible to illness.

If you sleep 8 hours but toss and turn all night, you may not be getting enough deep sleep.

It’s impossible to force your brain to go into deep sleep, but there are a number of strategies that have shown some promise in terms of increasing your percentage of deep sleep. These include:

• reducing stress
• establishing sleep rituals and routines
• using an eye mask to block out light
• sleeping in a cool room
• exercising
• eating a healthy diet
• listening to white or pink noise
• brainwave entrainment
• meditation

Although the science is still new, a number of sleep trackers are available that may help you track your sleep patterns and see how much light, REM, and deep sleep you are getting.

For more sleep support, check out our sleep shop.

According to the American Sleep Apnea Association, you should feel fresh and alert when you wake up, but many people don’t.

If you’re sleeping for 7 to 9 hours each night, but only 10 percent of that is deep sleep, you’re not getting the 90 minutes you need and might still be tired each day. A sleep study may help you figure out what is going on.

There are a number of possible causes that you might want to discuss with a doctor, including:

• general sleep disorder
• obstructive sleep apnea
• not getting enough sleep
• getting too much sleep
• other health conditions that cause fatigue

Scientists say that quality sleep is as important to health as food and water are. It helps you to survive and thrive. Some of the side effects of sleep deprivation include:

• memory troubles
• mood changes
• weakened immunity
• trouble concentrating
• poor response time and increased risk of accidents
• high blood pressure
• weight gain
• risk for diabetes
• low sex drive
• risk of heart disease
• poor balance
• early aging

Scientists agree that sleep is essential to health, and while stages 1 to 4 and REM sleep are all important, deep sleep is the most essential of all for feeling rested and staying healthy.

The average healthy adult gets roughly 1 to 2 hours of deep sleep per 8 hours of nightly sleep. There are various ways to gauge whether you are, from personal trackers to a sleep study.

If you’re waking up tired on a regular basis, it’s a good idea to talk to a healthcare provider.

Sleep phases in a child - Sleep stages of a baby baby

Each person has his own associations with the word "sleep". For some, this is a viscous, serene state, full of bliss. Someone more pragmatically will appreciate it as a rest for a tired mind and body. But for young parents, sometimes children's sleep attracts feelings of anxiety, excitement and even more fatigue. Such feelings are often associated with a lack of confidence in their knowledge on the subject.

What is sleep? Why do babies often wake up at night? What happens in the body of a child and an adult during sleep?

Sleep phases

In the middle of the 20th century, scientists at the University of Chicago N. Kleitman and Y. Azerinsky, using electroencephalographs, came to the conclusion that at night a person needs to go through 4-6 wavy cycles of 80-100 minutes each.

Everything starts with a nap. This is first phase . This dream is extremely sensitive, it lasts 5-10 minutes. Breathing, pulse slow down, muscles relax. If we turn to a person, then he says that he did not sleep, but simply thought.

Time has come for the second stage or slow-deep sleep , which lasts approximately 20 minutes. Consciousness is turned off, but there are also thresholds of high auditory sensitivity, i.e. a person can be easily awakened by calling his name. The dream is light and gentle, but already real.

This is followed by the third and fourth stages of slow deep sleep. At this moment it is difficult to wake us up. The brain is busy processing signals from internal organs. The body removes decay products that have accumulated in the brain during the period of wakefulness. The fourth phase accounts for 80% of dreams, but what a pity that we do not remember them.

Here we come to phase of REM sleep or REM sleep. Here our behavior changes. The brain begins to work rapidly, as if during wakefulness, experiencing strong emotions. The paradox lies in the fact that the human muscles are completely immobilized, atonic, only the eyeballs under the closed eyelids quickly perform movements in a coordinated manner. At this moment, we see the most colorful, vivid, emotional dreams that we remember after waking up. Our pulse, breathing are irregular, blood pressure and body temperature rise. The brain is busy processing and structuring the information received during the day. The brain adapts a person to changing environmental conditions, creates a program of action in the future. Therefore, it is not desirable to interrupt this phase of sleep, because. it directly affects the mental health of a person. It used to be thought that dreams lasted only seconds, but in fact we can dream up to half an hour. This is the most mysterious, unexplored phase. Scientists especially emphasize its importance for human life.

If you combine all the phases listed, you get one sleep cycle. Depending on the genetic predisposition (and not at all on laziness), a person needs to go through 4-6 such cycles. They vary in the duration of the individual phases during the night. If at first the slow sleep phase prevails, but in the morning its time decreases significantly from cycle to cycle, and the REM sleep phase becomes dominant.

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Peculiarities of sleep in children

Turning to explanations related to the peculiarities of sleep of children, a phrase from Winnie the Pooh’s verse involuntarily pops up in my head: “If bears were bees, they would not care ...” If babies were born with a sleep characteristic of an adult , they would lose their touchingness, we would not be able to surround them with care. Of course, children's sleep sometimes causes a lot of trouble, but you can and should adapt to its features. We can teach the baby the right sleep habits, can become a wise and calm teacher for the baby, who will be an active participant in joint daytime fun and a guide in the labyrinths of dreams.

From the first day, the brain begins the painstaking work of adapting the child to the world around him. During sleep, this work continues. Conventionally the sleep of an infant can be divided into 2 main phases: active and calm. The infant's resting phase of sleep is the beginning of the development of non-REM sleep, which requires more complex neurophysiological mechanisms. This transformation takes place only by 2.5-3 months. It is no coincidence that there is an expression "to fall asleep with the sleep of a baby", because. the deep sleep of a baby is much stronger than an adult, if the child has entered this phase, he cannot be awakened by external noise.

The active phase of childhood sleep is similar to REM sleep in adults. We can notice different expressions on the baby’s face; the palms are clenched and unclenched, it seems that the whole body conveys some kind of emotion (although in an adult we notice a minimum of movements in this phase). It can be assumed that the system of suppression of motor activity has not yet been developed in babies. At this point, the baby can wake himself up with his movements. It is useful to remember about swaddling for sleep.

How does a child's sleep change as they grow up?

The active phase of sleep in newborns takes up almost 70-80% of sleep. Literally in 2 weeks, 50% is given to fast sleep. By 4 months, baby's REM sleep is 40%. By 3 years - 30%. We must not forget that during REM sleep, the baby's brain integrates the information received during wakefulness into a complete picture of the world.

Baby's sleep cycle is 40-90 minutes, babies can't link sleep cycles, so they wake up and cry, it's an accessible way for them to communicate with adults. Weeping, they explain to us their needs. This is the way to survive.

As early as 4 months old, parents can start teaching their baby how to link sleep cycles to each other in order to provide better quality sleep for their baby and the whole family. The baby is growing, sleep norms are changing , and the process of children's sleep is becoming more and more close to that of an adult. The amount of sleep is reduced, periods of wakefulness change, the phase of active sleep decreases, muscle movements during sleep become a thing of the past.
Now it is useful to learn how to teach your child to connect the cycles of dreams. Believe the habit of sleeping through the night is a skill that can be mastered by children from 5-6 months.

Physiology Sleep PhasesSleep Cycle NormalSleep

Sleep phases | REM and deep phases of sleep in newborns

09/15/2015

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Child's regimen

Author of the article

Tatyana Chkhikvishvili

Tatyana Chkhikvishvili

Head of online programs, psychologist, consultant on sleep and breastfeeding

Mom of two children

Newborn sleep and sleep phases in children during the first months of life differ from adult sleep. What are the phases of a baby's sleep, when there is a transition to an adult sleep model, what happens after a change in the sleep pattern - this article tells.

0–4 months. Improve sleep in 3 weeks

Sleep before birth

Unborn babies spend most of their time sleeping. It is even possible that they are dreaming. Unfortunately, scientists do not have accurate information about exactly how babies sleep in their mother's stomach.

The first days of life

Immediately after birth, babies continue to sleep a lot, spending almost all the time sleeping. In newborns, sleep is divided into two phases:

• active sleep;
• restful sleep.

Active sleep already in the first days after birth is transformed into REM sleep, similar to the phase of REM sleep in adults. REM sleep is also called the REM stage - from the English "Rapid Eye Movement", which means "sleep with rapid eye movements. "

REM sleep

In adults, REM sleep accounts for 15–25% of sleep, while in infants, REM sleep is about 40–50%. This is necessary for the growth and development of the child's brain - it is in the phase of REM sleep that dreams give the brain visual images, training the brain and stimulating its growth.

REM sleep provides the function of psychological protection, relieves psycho-emotional stress, filters information, reboots the brain, and ensures brain growth.

The proportion of REM sleep decreases as the child grows:

Gradual maturation - 1-3 months

Another form of baby sleep is restful sleep, which later transforms into non-REM sleep, similar to adult sleep. Brain maturation takes place in different ways, all children have their own, individual speed. Non-REM sleep requires higher brain maturity, which is why it occurs later than REM sleep. This happens on average in 1-3 months.

Non-REM sleep consists of the following stages:

• Entering sleep
• Superficial sleep
• Deep sleep

Deep sleep

Deep sleep in babies is much better than in adults. Children practically do not react to sounds, light, touch and temperature. This stage of sleep in young children lasts about 20 minutes. Deep sleep is responsible for restoring energy. It "reboots" the body, relieves accumulated fatigue, gives physical rest, restores and "charges" the immune system.

In order to fully recover physically and strengthen the immune system, children need a sufficient presence of the stage of deep sleep - contrary to a fairly common misconception that children up to almost a year old should sleep exclusively on superficial sleep.

Falling asleep after 4 months

Now, falling asleep, babies “walk the steps of sleep”, sequentially passing through all stages of sleep.

Sleep stages of the child after 3–4 months:

1. sleep entry;
2. superficial sleep;
3. deep dream;
4. fast sleep.

That is why if you try to shift a grown-up child who has just fallen asleep, he will most likely wake up immediately - his dream was superficial.

40-minute naps

Sleep phases make up a baby's sleep cycle. After 3-4 months, it is similar to the adult sleep cycle, but has a much shorter duration - about 40 minutes.

A baby's 40-minute sleep cycle often ends with the baby waking up. This is necessary to monitor and assess its condition. Is everything in order, is it not hot, not cold, is the baby hungry?

If everything is in order, the baby immediately falls asleep again, and often parents do not even notice this micro-awakening. If something is wrong, the baby declares his needs.

Such awakenings between sleep cycles occur every night in adults.

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