NEW YORK - Children tend to vary widely in their sleep habits, with some being naturally "short sleepers" and others needing more time in bed, a study suggests.
Swiss researchers found that among 305 children they followed from ages 1 to 10, there was significant variability in how much sleep they typically got each night. However, most children -- 90 percent -- remained fairly steady in their sleep habits throughout childhood.
That is, children who were "short sleepers" or "long sleepers" as toddlers tended to be so later in childhood as well.
This suggests that biological makeup plays a large role in the amount of sleep any one child needs, the study authors report in the journal Pediatrics.
"We conclude from these findings that there is no optimal amount of sleep for the entire population of children," lead study author Dr. Oskar G. Jenni told Reuters Health.
Instead, "there is a wide range of 'normal' sleep duration among children," added Jenni, the director of the Child Development Center at University Children's Hospital Zurich.
Individual children in the study did show short-term fluctuations in the amount of the time they slept each night, according to parents' reports. And the average amount of sleep time naturally declined over the long term -- from more than 14 hours per day at age 1 to 10 hours at age 10...
Via Reuters
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