Sleep and routines

• Night terrors or nightmares? How to tell the difference

  They're different events. A nightmare happens in the second half of the night during REM sleep; the child wakes, is frightened, can describe what happened and wants comfort. A night terror happens in the first third of the night as a partial waking out of deep sleep; the child shouts, sweats, may have their eyes open, but isn't actually awake, doesn't respond to comfort and remembers nothing in the morning. Night terrors increase with sleep debt and irregular schedules; recurring nightmares usually relate to something difficult in the daytime.

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• My child won't go to bed: how do you fix bedtime resistance?

  Bedtime resistance usually comes down to one of three things: bedtime falls at an hour when the body isn't sleepy yet, the routine changes every evening, or separation is hard right now. The fix follows the same order: first establish a short routine with a fixed sequence that ends at the same time every night for two weeks, then move bedtime in 15-minute steps towards the real sleep-onset time, and only then work on separation by increasing distance gradually. Nothing works in a single night; what the effective methods share is doing the same thing every night.

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• How much sleep does a child need? Hours by age

  The American Academy of Sleep Medicine consensus recommends, per 24 hours, 11-14 hours for ages 1-2 (including naps), 10-13 hours for ages 3-5 (including naps), 9-12 hours for ages 6-12 and 8-10 hours for ages 13-18. These are ranges rather than targets: two children the same age can genuinely need two hours' difference. In practice a better measure than the clock is daytime function — if your child wakes without a struggle and doesn't hit sharp mood and attention crashes during the day, the amount is probably enough.

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