The legacy of childhood sleep problems

Infants experiencing sleep problems are more likely to develop emotional and behavioural problems by the time they start school, according to a Norwegian Study of 32,662 children published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics.

At 18 months of age, 1.7% of children slept for 10 hours or less and 3.2% woke at least three times a night. After allowing for confounders – such as parity, birth weight and maternal age – children who slept for 10 hours or less were three times (relative risk [RR] 3.12) more likely to have concurrent emotional problems and about twice as likely (RR 1.93) to have behavioural problems as those who slept for more than 13 hours. Sleeping for 11-12 hours increased the risk of concurrent emotional and behavioural problems by 41% and 26% respectively.