L'éducation au sommeil chez l'enfant

The prevention of most sleep disorders in children rests on the parents' education as early as the stay in the maternity ward, and then during consulting (the lack of knowledge about the characteristics of an infant's sleep can lead to the exhaustion of parents and to a behaviour close to ill-treatment). For school age children, valuing and respecting their sleep are priority objectives from the early age. Then, educating how to sleep aims at developing their autonomy and sensible management of their rhythms through acquisition of knowledge about sleep, about their own sleep and what influences it. Education rests on the following basic principles : interactivity (voluntary, well-informed adults listen to the needs and demands of children, adults who must be able to answer their questions while respecting each child's characteristics and family habits), stimulation of the child's curiosity and creativeness (by developing the capacities of imagination and expression in oral, written and artistic creation), actual partnership between education personnel, experts, activity leaders, parents (the changes or reinforcement in behaviour can durably take hold only if the proposals from the persons around the child are coherent and applied in daily life), and last, make the child really responsible for his/her own sleep. For these educative actions to be really efficient, they should take place three years in a row and use different educative media and appropriate pedagogy.