“The way you sleep in the first two years has a huge impact on the future. It is important to correct as soon as possible. Currently, we have exhausted, tired parents and restless children”, warns pediatrician Marta Rios, author of the study “Where does your child sleep?”.

In an interview with Lusa, Marta Rios, a doctor at the Centro Materno-Infantil do Norte (CMIN) of the Unidade Local de Saúde de Santo António (ULSSA), in Porto, stresses that “it is necessary to create limits and a routine”.

The study carried out through a questionnaire shared on social media and by parents' associations across the country, revealed that almost one in four children shares a room or bed with their parents.

The analysis took place over three months and involved parents of children aged zero to 12 years. 1,971 valid responses were considered.

The data revealed that 24.2% of children share a room with their parents, while 18.5% sleep in the same bed.

Among the main reasons given by parents for this practice, 24.5% say that their children wake up frequently during the night, 26.2% say they feel safer having them close by, while 23.2% mention their children's difficulties in falling asleep.

“These data show that a significant percentage of children sleep in their parents’ room or bed, often due to difficulty falling asleep or frequent night-time awakenings. These habits, although understandable, can impact the quality of children’s sleep and even family dynamics,” says the paediatrician.

Admitting that sharing a room and/or bed is a “controversial” topic, a topic on which Portugal still has little data, Marta Rios says she was not surprised by the results of the questionnaire, carried out in October last year, but she was “at least a little worried”.

“We knew that in Denmark or France, for example, the percentage is around 30%. In Italy only around 6%. The expectation [about Portugal] was that we would be in the middle and that's what we saw.”