One Third Of Parents Lie About Their Children’s Sleeping Habits

How many hours sleep does your young one get each night?

Are you strict when it comes to them getting their nightly kip?

Exhausted mums and dads are lying about their children's sleeping habits due to pressure to be seen as a perfect parent, a recent survey revealed.

The survey revealed that less than half of parents (45.8 per cent) claim their child never wakes during the night. Only around one in ten (11.1 per cent) children get up three or more times.

Parenting website Netmums, which questioned almost 11,000 parents, also said the findings showed the pressure to be a perfect parent is so great, that around a third of parents lie about their children's sleeping habits.

This includes lying about the time their child goes to bed or wakes up, when their small one first slept through the night on their own and how well their son or daughter sleeps.

A parenting webste recommends the amount of hours a child should sleep for each day, but says it depends on the individual child and their age.

Newborns sleep for about 15-18 hours a day, but in short bursts of two to three hours as opposed to one long snooze.

By six weeks of age, regular sleeping patterns should be evident in your child. A child of 1-4 months old should sleep for 14-15 hours a day. Longer periods of sleep are clear.

For a child between the ages of 4-12 months old, up to 15 hours a day is ideal, although most infants up to 11 months old will only get about 12 hours sleep a day.

A 1-3 year old should catch about 12-14 hours a day kip. As the child grows older they are more than likely to lose their morning nap and only nap once a day.

A 3-6 year old should sleep for approximately 10-12 hours a day, and should typically head to bed between 7 and 9pm, and wake up at around 6 and 8am, just as they did when they were younger.

Between the ages of 7-12, a child should aim for around 10-11 hours of sleep a day. There can be a wide range of bedtimes.

Finally, a 12-18 year old needs sleep just as much as a younger child does. Sleep needs remain just as vital to health and well-being for teenagers as it did for babies. Every teenager should aim for between 8-9 hours of sleep a day.