Babies do not sleep as hard as adults

Infants not only fall asleep and have shorter cycles of sleep and more periods of awakening, they have twice as fast sleep than adults. Of course, this is unlikely to seem honest parents, harassed cares about the child during the day. Lesson number three: babies sleep as they sleep - or do not sleep - because they are so arranged.

This ensures the survival of

Suppose your child would sleep as an adult. He could spend most of the night in a deep sleep, with only three or four periods, fraught with nightly awakenings, after which he would again fall asleep himself. Sounds great! Perhaps, but for you,

and not for the child. Suppose a child is frozen and unable to wake up to let you know about your need for warmth;suppose he was hungry, but he could not wake up to tell you about his food needs. Suppose that his nose was clogged and he could not breathe, but he did not wake up to report that he needed help. We believe that babies are designed to easily wake up in the first months of life, when their needs at night are greatest, and their ability to report them is the most limited.

This provides the development of

Sleep researchers believe that fast, or superficial, sleep is beneficial to the infant, as it provides mental exercises. Dreams that occur during superficial sleep give the developing brain of the child visual images. This autostimulation during sleep contributes to the development of the brain. Once, when we explained the theory that superficial sleep helps the babies brain develop, one tired mother of a constantly awakening child at night said with a laugh: "If that's so, my child will grow very smart."

But when will the child sleep all night? The age at which the child's sleep normalizes - that is, in which he easily falls asleep and does not wake up

in the middle of the night - varies from child to child. Some children fall asleep easily, but are easily awakened. Others do not wake up every now and then, but they fall asleep with difficulty. Still others, stretching out all the strength from their parents, children do not want to fall asleep or remain in a dream.

In the first three months, infants' sleep reminds them of their feeding: small, frequent feeding - small, frequent periods of sleep. Quite small children rarely sleep more than four hours without experiencing the need for feeding. They do not make any distinction between day and night and usually sleep fourteen-nineteen to eighteen hours a day.

In the period from three to six months, most children begin to come to a more orderly regime. During the day they are awake for longer periods, and some can sleep for five hours at a time at night. Be prepared for at least one or two nightly awakenings.

As the child grows older, the periods of deep sleep are prolonged, the periods of superficial sleep are shortened, the number of periods of susceptibility that night awakens happen, decreases, and children can enter a state of deep sleep more quickly. This is called the maturity of sleep;The age at which children acquire this adult model of sleep is significantly different.

Theoretically it sounds good, but why do they still wake up? When the child's brain begins to