Sleep behavior of babies and children

The newborn fell asleep in mom’s arms a long time ago, but when he tries to put him in his crib, he wakes up immediately. In a few months, the same situation will be different and even a vacuum cleaner may not wake the child up. Can the child learn to fall asleep so soundly? Not directly. Although children are extremely capable of learning with regard to their sleeping behavior and sleeping habits, the child’s sleep pattern has its origin primarily in the nature of the human organism.

Between dream and deep sleep

First of all, there are two types of sleep: deep sleep (non-REM sleep) and dream sleep (REM sleep). The scientific name REM stands for “rapid eye movement” and indicates that the eyes move quickly behind the closed lids.

• Deep sleep can be divided into four consecutive stages. You fall, so to speak, from the very light to the light, then to the deep and finally to the very deep deep sleep. Breathing and heartbeat become calmer and more regular from stage to stage, you hardly move and you may start to snore. You are completely relaxed in this phase and it is difficult to wake yourself up without an alarm clock or other external influences. The deep sleep phase is replaced several times a night by dream sleep.
• You wake up much more easily from the dream sleep, because the brain is active to process new impressions. Breathing and heartbeat are more irregular than in deep sleep, the eyes move behind the closed lids. Maybe your hands or your face will twitch too. You obviously dream, even if you don’t move much otherwise.

When older children or adults fall asleep, they always fall asleep first. After two to three hours, the first dream sleep phase follows, and so the two phases alternate about five to six times a night.

First 3 months: Newborns “dream” more

Newborns are an exception: they fall into dream sleep first in the first three months of life, unlike older children and adults . That’s why they wake up so easily after falling asleep. The proportion of dream sleep phases in newborns is also higher at 50 percentthan in older children or adults. In the case of three-year-olds, they already make up only around a third of sleep and in adults only a quarter. As is now known, brain maturation and body growth in children take place in part during sleep, and there is evidence that the dream sleep phases are particularly important for learning and memory. This also explains why infants need almost twice as much sleep as adults. In addition, a lot of sleep protects babies from information overload and is important for the development of the immune system.

Up to 6 months of age: adjusting sleep patterns

From the 3rd month of life, babies first fall into deep sleep, which at that point has not yet matured through all 4 stages. But by the 6th month of life, this is also fully developed and the sleep pattern is similar to that of adults. The graphic below shows very clearly how the different sleeping and waking phases alternate when a child falls asleep from the age of 6 months.

Waking periods are normal

Of course it would be nice if a night consisted exclusively of sleep phases. But there are also phases of wakefulness, which usually occur during a transition from, for example, dream sleep to deep sleep. Some children fall asleep straight away and the parents don’t even realize it was awake. Others start crying and need mom or dad to help them get back to sleep. Why is that?

Children “check” in waking environment

During the short waking phases, children instinctively “check” whether everything is exactly as it was before falling asleep. If, for example, he just fell asleep in his mother’s arms and later wakes up alone in his bed, then something has changed. So it starts crying and probably doesn’t fall asleep again until it’s in mommy’s arms. The whole thing will probably repeat itself with the next waking phase. If, on the other hand, the child was put to bed while awake, then when he “checks” after the first awakening, he will find that everything is the same as before and most likely continue to sleep peacefully. When using sleeping aids, such as pacifiers or bottles, it can also happen that the child realizes that something is wrong when he wakes up.

So your child’s sleep pattern runs between deep and dream sleep, interrupted by short periods of wakefulness. Whether your child cries or stays asleep during these short periods of waking depends to a large extent on their sleeping habits.