section_path: Ideal duration/Children
section_name: Children
paragraph_text: Children
  
  By the time infants reach the age of two, their brain size has reached 90 percent of an adult-sized brain; a majority of this brain growth has occurred during the period of life with the highest rate of sleep. The hours that children spend asleep influence their ability to perform on cognitive tasks. Children who sleep through the night and have few night waking episodes have higher cognitive attainments and easier temperaments than other children.
  
  Sleep also influences language development. To test this, researchers taught infants a faux language and observed their recollection of the rules for that language. Infants who slept within four hours of learning the language could remember the language rules better, while infants who stayed awake longer did not recall those rules as well. There is also a relationship between infants' vocabulary and sleeping: infants who sleep longer at night at 12 months have better vocabularies at 26 months.
  
  Children can greatly benefit from a structured bedtime routine. This can look differently among families, but will generally consist of a set of rituals such as reading a bedtime story, a bath, brushing teeth, and can also include a show of affection from the parent to the child such a hug or kiss before bed. A bedtime routine will also include a consistent time that the child is expected to be in bed ready for sleep. Having a reliable bedtime routine can help improve a child's quality of sleep as well as prepare them to make and keep healthy sleep hygiene habits in the future.