Sleeping Patterns

It is interesting how our sleeping patterns change with our age. As babies we sleep most of the time except when we need feeding, and then we do our best to ensure that nobody else sleeps until our hunger is satiated. I am fairly convinced that reason for the strident cries of a hungry baby is to wake up the world. As toddlers and older children we also need a considerable amount of sleep. I remember at infants' school we had to rest our heads in our arms and have a little sleep during the day, though I don't think that happens nowadays, and perhaps it was for the benefit of the teacher rather than us children.

As adolescents and teenagers our sleep pattern changes considerable. It seems that suddenly we no longer need to sleep at night. We do, as I was often accused of, turn night into day. We are happy to sleep in our comfortable beds through the daylight hours, but we would much prefer to be up till dawn whenever the opportunity arises. As a student it was not unusual to hear the milkman in the street before I went to bed, and when not partying the night away I could quite happily work through the night and catch up with sleep in cat naps taken throughout the day.

As we get older we tend to revert to earlier sleep patterns and really need a good nights sleep in a comfortable bed in order to feel human and productive. There does seem to be an irony though in that quite often elderly people lose the ability to sleep. I remember my poor old Gran quite often complaining that she had not been able to find sleep, yet sit her down in front of the television and she would be snoring within a few minutes. How sleep affects us differently through the stages of our life is a mystery.

As adolescents and teenagers our sleep pattern changes considerable. It seems that suddenly we no longer need to sleep at night. We do, as I was often accused of, turn night into day. We are happy to sleep in our comfortable beds through the daylight hours, but we would much prefer to be up till dawn whenever the opportunity arises.