If you have not already done so, please read Blog Posts 1 through 5 that describe how sleep is important and beneficial. I will post specific information for parents and children based on my book, “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.” Please do not be put off by my book’s length. This is a reference book. Read only the topic of interest to you.
“It is never too late to start implementing healthy sleep habits.”
This update comes from a Spanish sleep researcher and mother, now two and a half years into the experiment of applying what she knows professionally to the child sleeping in the next room. The earlier installment described the early months — the cultural challenge of early bedtimes in a country where dinner is served at 9 or 10pm, the shared responsibility she and her husband built from the beginning, and the gradual consolidation of a sleep routine that surprised her Spanish family and friends. This update describes what two and a half years of consistent early bedtimes have produced.
“My daughter is currently 2 years and a half, and I can happily say that she is overall a happy child, and also most importantly, a very healthy child. There are of course a number of reasons why this is the case, and as parents, we always try to do the best for our children. But, as a sleep researcher myself, I always knew that sleep is in fact a very important feature for good development of the child — and now I can see that this is in fact very true.
My husband and I made sure that we were putting in place all the techniques needed to ensure that our daughter would acquire healthy sleep habits. And one of these healthy sleep habits was to instill in her — but also in us — early bedtime routines. And this is something that has continued until now. This has not only massively helped to improve the sleep quality and sleep length of our child, but also, as she goes early to bed, this has allowed us as a couple to have more time for ourselves while our daughter sleeps. It might be only two hours, but these two hours at night make a big difference, at least for us. And we always ensured that our daughter had enough hours of sleep — even now, at 2 years and a half, we make sure that she gets her nap every day and that she is always rested.
I can notice that overall, this has had a very positive effect on her development as a whole. And very importantly, my daughter is very healthy, despite being at the nursery every day from Monday to Friday. I can see that many of her nursery friends get easily ill, but in our case, our daughter is hardly ill, and when she does get ill, it may last a maximum of a couple of days. I know that genetics and other factors play an important role here, but as a sleep researcher myself, we cannot forget about the impact that sleep has on physical health — and also on mental health — and on the immune system. In my daughter I can see a clear example of this.
So, as a summary, I would like to highlight how important good sleep quality is in children, and how this has an impact in the short and long term. And that it is never too late to start implementing healthy sleep habits.”
What Two and a Half Years of Early Bedtimes Produced
The outcome this mother describes is not dramatic or surprising if you understand the biology. It is exactly what the research predicts: a child who is well-rested is happier, develops more robustly, and maintains a healthier immune system than a child who is chronically short on sleep. What makes this account valuable is that it comes from someone who knew the research before her daughter was born — and can now report, from inside the experience, that the research was right.
Two details are worth particular attention.
The first is the observation about illness. A child in daily nursery care is exposed to pathogens continuously. That this child gets ill rarely, and recovers quickly when she does, is consistent with what the sleep literature shows about immune function — sleep is not incidental to immune competence, it is foundational to it. Whether sleep is the primary explanation here or one of several contributing factors, this mother — who studies these relationships professionally — considers it significant enough to name.
The second is the couple’s evening time. Two hours. That is what an early bedtime returns to the parents. Two hours of quiet, of conversation, of the marriage that preceded the child and that the child depends on. This mother names it not as a luxury but as part of what makes the whole system sustainable — the parents rest, the child rests, and the family functions better as a result.
The Cultural Resistance
The earlier installment described the challenge of maintaining early bedtimes within Spanish culture — family dinners at 9 or 10pm, social gatherings that run late, relatives who interpreted the baby’s good sleep as luck rather than practice. That resistance has not disappeared. What has happened is that this family made a decision, held it consistently, and the results have made the decision easier to defend.
When she told her family in Spain that her daughter sleeps well, they said she had been lucky. Her response — that luck is the result of a combination of factors and skills, and that the training must continue — is one of the more honest and compact summaries of what healthy sleep actually requires.
All families. All cultures. One biology. The early bedtime works in Spain for the same reason it works in Iceland, the Netherlands, Iran, and Chicago. The biology does not negotiate with the dinner schedule.
— Marc Weissbluth, M.D.
