Sleep less than 5 hours a night and more than 9 hours a night for adults has been linked to brain activity similar to psychiatric disorders, and can lead to increased risk for diabetes, obesity, headaches, back pain, depression, heart disease, and possibly death.The effect are similar with teens, children, and babies.

Your age and activity level will determine your sleep needs to some extent. Children and teens, for instance, need more sleep than adults. However, your sleep needs are individual to you. You may require more or less sleep than someone of the same age, gender and activity level.

Sleep researchers have also found that it takes just a single night of sleeping only four to six hours to impact your ability to think clearly the next day. Anyone who has had children knows for a fact how that feels.

It sort of always makes me so sad when I am at the grocery store late at night and see parents dragging their crying or misbehaving children behind them and they can’t understand why they are so frustrated with them…children need their sleep  just like the rest of us to be fully functional!

When my babies were very small, I would frequently miss out on family events or other functions if they interfered with my children’s  optimal sleep schedule. Bed time was sacred at our house. It was hard, but the pay off was children who love bedtime and it is literally never a struggle. Every new babysitter always tells me what a dream my kids are to put to bed, and it’s because bedtime has always been a positive thing and I never waited until they were too tired to put them to bed.

If sleep is hard to come by at your house, or if you have little ones, you will really want to buy the book “healthy sleep habits, happy child” by Marc Weissbluth. It literally changed my life when my first baby was a couple of months old. I followed his recommendations to the tee and I never struggles with naps or bed time again. Before reading this book, I literally would be up until 10 or 11pm with my newborn until we both collapsed from exahstion.