 [ Symptoms ] my brother has been diagnosed with chemical pneumonia can this be passed on to another person  he is concerned that there may be a possibility that his two children might contract the disease [ Disease ] the amount of sleep that a child needs is going to be based on that child is age actually we have a great article on webmd where you can actually click on the different ages to find out what your child is sleep need is going to be but generally speaking what we are finding in national sleep foundation is polls is that kids are not getting enough sleep and they are also not getting sleep at the times that they need it may be an enjoyable thing to because you are coming home late to be able to spend some time with your child and have them stay up past their bedtime but it really can be a detriment to their health in the long run in the first year of life children are going to sleeping north of 18 hours in some cases maybe as little as 12 or 13 hours but that oftentimes occurs if you have a very colicky baby or a reflux baby try to know and understand what health issues could be going on there when you get into the 2 to 3 range that is when your children should be sleeping about 11 – 12 hours then when you start to move into grade school you are going to be looking at 9 to 10 hours and you should your kids should stick to the 9 to 10 hour range almost through high school very few high schoolers get that much sleep and so interestingly what we have found is first of all high school age children tend to swing and want to stay up late and sleep late and so anybody out there who has a high school age kid knows that the kids want to stay up til 200 am and then they want to sleep til noon uh that is a natural occurrence for them believe it or not in minnesota they actually changed school start times and they found that kids increased their grades by almost a full letter grade by actually going to school later and staying later so when you are talking with your children about sleep one of the things that you want to say is hey this is very important for you first of all it helps you learn second of all it helps your overall mood and finally it really helps your health and so i try to make the importance of sleep greater for children so that way they can get an understanding of it it is not that mom or dad wants you to go to bed at a certain time because they are mean it is because they are actually doing something better for your health