Just before Easter we were lucky enough to conduct a wide-ranging interview with Dr Rob Hicks on the subject of sleep. We covered the whole area of diabetes and sleep in a previous post which you can read here.

Today we would like to share with you Dr Hicks’ suggestions on how to get the best night’s sleep for your child.

We asked Dr Hicks as to why children often have difficulty getting to sleep. He replied “Well I think the reasons for children are very similar to those that are adults so when you look at the survey results worrying about something was the major cause of not getting a good night sleep and you have to acknowledge that even children worry about things just like adults do although children tend to worry about different things so it might be the fact that they have had an argument with a friend in school or maybe they have stopped being best friends with somebody , maybe they have exams coming up ins school, maybe they are in secondary school and they have very important exams coming up whereas with adults they tend to worry about money, occupation ,work and relationship problems.”

His advice for a good routine was excellent and very straightforward he feels “the routine is very important whether you are a child or an adult and what we talk about is sleep hygiene mechanism so you have to make sure that somebody is going to bed at the same time every night, that they get up every time every morning and that’s the case of whether it’s a work day, a school day or its day that they have off, to make sure that the bedroom is quiet, that its dark, that the bed and pillow is comfy and that is basically conducive to a good night’s sleep.”