A. baby’s sleep pattern It can challenge parents on their best days. It’s not surprising, then, that the clocks change due to the end of the year. daylight saving time – and therefore delaying any hard-earned programming by an hour – parents may be worried about the impact this will have on their children.

There is a growing body of scientific research that is helping to bust some of the myths around baby sleep (you can read more This article is about the science of baby sleep). So what does science have to tell families about how babies and toddlers cope with time change? So, do you have any tips to make the transition from summer to winter easier?

The first is true for babies as it is for adults. It may take time to get used to. “Even though mechanical clocks change suddenly, the body Time changes take time to implement,” says Pamela Douglas, Australian GP, ​​sleep researcher and founder of sleep research. Possum Sleep InterventionAn approach to parent-child sleep adopted by healthcare professionals worldwide.

For example, one analysis looked at: How did more than 600 children sleep after the clocks changed in the spring?. It found that it took toddlers aged one to two an average of three days to return to their original sleep time, and babies under one took eight days.

Children’s morning waking hours have also changed. However, for some age groups the average time was not more than an hour; This means they are sleeping slightly less overall than before the clocks changed. Six- to 11-month-old babies’ nightly sleep was about seven to 15 minutes shorter than before, even four weeks after daylight saving time was implemented. (Total nightly sleep for toddlers returned to baseline after only one week).

But because the researchers didn’t track sleep time, it’s unclear whether this translates into total sleep loss over a 24-hour period. National Sleep Foundation And American Academy of Sleep MedicineConfigure its suggestions. Even so, 7 to 15 minutes in 24 hours is still a tiny fraction of the amount of sleep children should get overall. For babies four to 11 monthsfor example, the recommended interval is 12 to 15 hours in 24 hours.

It is important to remember that sleep is important even for babies. flexible and adaptable. In fact, our preoccupation with rigid year-round sleep schedules for babies appears to be a relatively new phenomenon and far from universal. For example, numerous ethnographic accounts of pre-industrial societies show that infants and children normally either you sleep with their caregivers (and go to bed when their caregiver goes to bed) or fall asleep in their caregiver’s arms or sling whenever they are sleepy, wherever they are, including at social events.