Just saw headline the other night about naps in children interefering with sleep. Did anyone else, and can they explain it please?

[fizzbuzz]

Thanks

no i can't, in was in new scientist but dp removed it before i could start a rant.

no naps in my kids interferes with my sanity though.

I think i saw it on bbc news online, it was about ages from toddlers up to 12s, too much late afternoon sleep can affect night sleep making them not sleep enough and wake too often or early, or something like that, and can affect concentration I think. Didn't really take much in really as my dd is 11 months so it kind of went in one ear and out the other!!! HTH.

eh?

they are saying that if kids sleep in the early afternoon then they don't sleep as well at night?

thats IT?

they had to do a scientific experiement to work that out?

It wasn't about babies, it's about older kids. It makes them sleep less well at night apparently - which is probably true. I think a good block of sleep at night is good for everyone.

Oooh, yes. When I read it I thought I would post a link on the 'bedtimes - rod for your own back' thread or whatever it was called. But I forgot...

actually i think it might be more complex

we assume a long period of night time sleep is a good thing. but i think there is evidence that its not what we're "designed" to do (oh whatever that means). I think there is some evidence that we would, in the wild, have a midday siesta then a nap when it first becomes dark, then a reflective period of wakefulness prior to a proper nights sleep of about 5-6 hours.

This may be bllx though, can't even remember where I read it

I thought it was common knowledge! If i fall asleep in afternoon, takes ages to sleep at night. How much did they spend on that study. Stupid gits, could have just asked us lot

Would it have to be reflective? Could I just watch telly?

Well, the article was as vague as my grandmother, but what I understood from it was that when children take enforced naps, it impairs certain things (one of them being the obviously inability to sleep at night).

They did imply that it was nothing to do with natural naps, of the type where a kid is babbling one minute, and fast asleep on the settee the next.

In other words (confusing I know), don't put them down in the afternoons - but don't wake them up if they go off naturally.

and in which category is a car/buggy-ride nap?

In the nothing-to-worry-about category, I think, because small children do tend to drop off when in motion.

The news item was very vague, but from what little I understood of it, the problem lay in making your children sleep when they wouldn't ordinarily feel like it ... like having a routine where you put a 2 or 3 down in the afternoons when they're not particularly sleepy.

I don't have an opinion on this one way or the other, btw, it's just what I extrapolated from the news item.

That should read, 2 or 3 year old ...

dd age nearly 12 months, never ever just crashes out ever. Am I right to put her down then?

Saw thing in New Scientist, but do 11 and 12 year olds have naps in afternoon?

my ds age 13 stopped having afternoon naps at about 2 1/2 to 3

Oh, you're fine with a baby, fizz. The advice was concerning older children.

My ds is now 2.8. He's gone through a long spell of not sleeping at all in the daytime, but this last two weeks, I can't keep him awake.

I put it down to a growth spurt. Like most of us, I'm very reluctant to wake a sleeping child. I think the info is too vague for us to make anything of it.

Let sleeping babes lie, I say!

The torygraph article

Here's one article - daily mail I'm afraid but more references in it than the bbc one:

www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=464799&in_page_id=1770

TBH, as I read it there are a few issues with the quality of the research that leap out at me. How old are older children? what is a 'long' nap? what time are the napping children going to bed? Why are they reporting on a presentation, the gold standard is a published peer-reviewed paper and I can't see reference to that.

I'm on the defensive (as you might gather) as DS1 (2.8) still has a 1-2hr nap around lunchtime but he also sleeps 12 hours at night (19.30-07.30). He is one of the brightest children in his class at preschool, he can do 60 piece jigsaws on his own, knows all his letters and can count to 12. I would need to see more, better research before taking it seriously.

Ds will happily sleep for over 2 hours in the afternoon, but it's getting increasingly difficult to get him to sleep in the evening.

But FWIW this research studied 27 kids in Florida!!!

They're trying very hard to get American kids to be brighter then?
Sorry, that was not nice...

Just before DD turned 2 we knocked regular day time naps on the head as they did affect DD's sleeping at night. For every half hour nap during the day it would knock her bedtime back about twixe as long. Nightmare.

my dd has just dropped her nap, she was 2 on friday. it got so that any amount of day time sleep meant she didn't go to bed before 9. bloody nightmare. now all i have to do is get nursery to take me seriously when i tell them she isn't to nap there....

fillyjonk, was that in the FT magazine? Apparently people used to get up in the middle of the night and go and visit neighbours etc. after they'd had their first sleep.

can you help me?

DD2 is 20m, up until this week she has never slept through the night but it hasn't been a big deal, just wakes once at 1 or 3am for a drink and straight back to sleep til 6.30 or when DD2 wakes her. V good at going to bed at 7.30ish - no problems.

This week she has started to sleep through at last - but only until 5am . she is totally wide awake and full of smiles/energy. there is no way we can get her back to sleep.

she sleeps 1-1.5 hours in the day. some days if we're out and about she will only sleep 20-30 mins in the car and she seems ok on that. Would you drop her daytime sleep? I don't want to make her overtired and ruin the progress we are making (finally) on her daytime sleep.

is this the article you were referring to, fillyjonk?