A Dutch study following 5,443 children for nine years finds that irregular family routines in toddlerhood predict sleep problems all the way to age 10 — and that the regularity of family meals, not bedtime habits, did most of the work.
A 2025 meta-analysis pooling 27 studies and 67 effect sizes found that naps boost declarative memory in early childhood — and the effect size is largest, surprisingly, in 3- to 5-year-olds, exactly the age when parents most often consider dropping the nap.
A review of 46 studies spanning a decade reveals that “how much” matters less than “how” — co-viewing with conversation, realistic content, and screen-free bedtimes shape outcomes more than raw minutes.