by Sarah Blunden, The Conversation

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Sleep, along with diet and physical activity, is one of the three pillars of good health. Good sleep makes it easier to grow, learn, perform, be happy, stay in our best weight range and generally be in the best mental and physical health. This is true for all humans but is particularly important with children.

Regular sleep patterns are important for good sleep. But children and their families often stay with relatives or in holiday accommodation around this time of year. Parents may anxiously wonder: will changing sleeping arrangements during school holidays sabotage good habits formed and maintained during the school term?

For over 20 years, I have researched and treated children sleep problems. The research suggests changing sleep patterns over the summer break does not have to be a problem. And there's a lot you can do to manage sleep issues during and after the holidays.

Sleeping as a skill

In Australia, as in many western industrialized countries, parents often (but not always) expect their children to sleep alone in their own room and in their own bed.

Up to 40% of families use behavioral sleep strategies to teach their child sleep alone. While such strategies are generally successful in achieving this, it can be hard work for all the family.

Many parents worry that having children share a room or even a bed with their parents over the holidays will become the habit during term time, too.

However, the science says once children have learned a skill, such as sleeping alone, they have a "neural understanding" of that skill. That means their brain has registered, recorded and filed the "memory" of sleeping alone and this is stored for quite a long time.

Short relapses or interruptions to using that skill will not eradicate it in the brief time of a holiday. The child will still know how to sleep alone.

However, they may not want to.

Children may may realize sleeping with parents or siblings is actually pretty great (for them). It may be less fun, however, for the parents (who may not necessarily want to share a bed with a wriggly child, or feel frustrated by seeing siblings who don't normally share a room, muck around when they should be asleep).

Like many aspects of parenting, it helps for parents to remind their children of the rules at home and guide them back to their regular sleep pattern.

Helping children to understand the co-sleeping or room sharing arrangement may be temporary is helpful. Children can and do learn sleeping arrangements can be different in different places, but the rules stay the same at home.

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.