Head banging: sleep habit in babies

If your child is banging their head against the frame of their bed or rocking around before going to sleep, then it’s understandable that you’re worried. It doesn’t seem normal. Many associate it with an illness and are afraid that the child will injure itself, especially if it hits its head.

Usually harmless for infants and small children

If your child is otherwise healthy, you usually don’t need to worry. In their book “Every child can learn to sleep”, the authors Annette Kast-Zahn and Dr. Hartmut Morgenroth that head banging & Co. is more common in infants and small children. It usually appears in the first year of life and disappears on its own after a year and a half at the latest, in the third to fourth year of life.

It’s often a bedtime habit

It is often children with a penchant for rhythmic movements who develop such a habit, usually to help themselves fall asleep. Perhaps you have noticed that your child reacts particularly to music? The movements with the head also seem to have a calming rather than painful effect on the affected children. If they were in severe pain, children would be less likely to do it.

Identify serious disruption

In most cases, this behavior is harmless. However, if any of the following statements are true, you should talk to your doctor:

• Your child will start banging their head or rocking when they are older than a year and a half.
• Your child will still bang their head or rock after they are three or four years old.
• Head banging or rocking starts after a bad event.
• Your child already has developmental disabilities.

Tips on how to deal with headbanging

If you can rule out that your child’s head banging or rocking indicates a serious disorder, you can heed the following tips:

• Give your child enough opportunity to move rhythmically during the day, for example to music.
• You can try to encourage your child’s sense of rhythm by placing a loudly ticking alarm clock next to their bed.
• Feel free to pad the bed. For safety reasons , however, you should only do this when your child is more than one year old. You can also put a mattress in the middle of the room. In this way you “make it more difficult” for your child to find a suitable place to bang their head.
• Make sure your child doesn’t spend too much time in bed when they’re not sleeping. You can find tips on how to determine the optimal bed times for your child in our article “If you have trouble sleeping through the night” . The more tired your child is when they go to bed, the less time they will spend headbanging and rocking.
• Do not give the “phenomenon” any special attention that could encourage your child to do so.

So head banging and rocking in young children is rarely the result of a serious disorder. In most cases, with a little patience, the problem will resolve itself.