Children's sleep needs : is there sufficient evidence to recommend optimal sleep for children?

It is widely recognised that sleep is important for children’s health and well-being and that short sleep duration is associated with a wide range of negative health outcomes. Recently, there has been much interest into whether or not there is sufficient data to support the specific recommendations made for how much sleep children need. In this paper we explore concepts around children’s sleep need, discuss the theory, rationale and empirical evidence for contemporary sleep recommendations and outline future research directions for sleep recommendations. If sleep is to be treated as a therapeutic intervention, then consensus guidelines, statements and evidence-based best practice documents are needed to underpin sleep recommendations for children.