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This is a helpful resource on what emotion regulation skills to expect by age. Written with the support of a licensed professional counselor.

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Sprout worked with a licensed professional counselor to get insight into emotional regulation in children. She is currently finishing up a PHD in counseling and works with children at a nonprofit in their child development center. When asked about different ways that different ages of children are able to self-regulate

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This article suggests tools for self-regulation in the first 5 years (great for kindergarten students).

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Right Brain & Left Brain Refrigerator Sheet

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Right Brain & Left Brain Refrigerator Sheet

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This document is reflective of the tools outlined in 'The Whole Brain Child' by Dr. Daniel Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson.

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These are the tools discussed in the presentation related to how to talk to children about emotions.

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Why and How to Talk to Kids About Emotions - Raising-independent-kids

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How to talk to your child about emotions to foster and strengthen his/her emotion intelligence skills. Foster emotional intelligence in your kid

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This is a helpful tool to talk about anxiety & anger with kids, as well as to teach them how to manage these feelings.

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I bet you've heard the story about the smart fish. If you haven't, this is how it goes

(Important disclaimer: I did not write this metaphorical story and I have been unable to find the original version. This is my adapted version after reading one version of the story here):

There once lived a fisherman who would always fish at the same spot. Every day he'd go fishing, and every day he'd catch a fish. But the fish were soon onto his game. They began to notice that every time one of them would bite his bait, he would disappear.

The fish got very angry and decided to hurt the fisherman, but they soon realized that to hurt him they would have to let themselves get caught first. Bad idea. So they decided to come up with other solutions.

As they were looking at the fisherman's bait, they saw that there was a hidden hook. That's when they understood that to avoid getting caught, they would have to avoid that hook.

The next day the fisherman went fishing, he caught no fish - none of the fish would bite. He didn't understand what was going on. How come the fish didn't bite yet all the other days he had used the same bait and it had never failed to catch him fish? " I know what I'll do", he said to himself, " tomorrow I'll use more bait. "

So determined was the fisherman to catch a fish that he put twice as much bait the next day. The fish were tempted and as they approached the tasty bait, they remembered the hook and swam away.

The fisherman was at his wit's end. He didn't know what to think. " I know what I'll do," he thought to himself, " I'll put thrice as much bait. " But even with his new trick, the fisherman was unable to catch any fish. The fish knew that the fisherman was only baiting them.

The fisherman knew when he had lost. He realized that he would no longer be able to catch any fish at that spot. He packed up his fishing gear and changed spots, leaving the little fish in peace.

This powerful story has important lessons for kids and adults alike. Becoming a smart fish is about teaching your child to think about different ways that they can deal with emotion-provoking situations.

Teaching your child to manage big emotions

We now know that children who have learned to understand what triggers strong emotions such as anger and anxiety and respond to those emotions appropriately are more accountable, do better socially and academically, and are happier and more successful in life.

Fostering your child's emotional intelligence gives them important tools that they will use beyond the childhood years. But teaching our kids to be "smart fish" is a difficult and long process. This makes sense when we know that even adults struggle with "recognizing and avoiding bait". Researchers have found that the earlier you teach your kids about emotional intelligence, the easier it will be for them to manage strong emotions in adolescence and adulthood.

Strengthening your child's emotional intelligence is about helping them identify different emotions, understand their triggers, and develop a "toolkit" they can use to deal with strong emotions in a socially appropriate manner. While this will not get rid of all meltdowns, it can give them the tools to communicate more effectively and reduce the frequency and intensity of what we often put down to acting-out.

Teaching kids about emotions: A few things to keep in mind:

Teaching children to manage and respond appropriately to strong emotions is difficult and takes time. Practice makes perfect. Be patient.

Some strategies will work better than others depending on your specific context. Fortunately, many strategies exist. Brainstorm possible strategies together and let your child choose the ones that suite her best.

Talking about strong emotions such as anger and anxiety frequently but over short periods is likely to have better results that referring to emotions infrequently or over-focusing on anger management strategies.

Teaching your child to manage strong emotions: 3 important emotion regulation phases

Phase 1: Helping your child identify emotions

Few children are able to differentiate between emotions without being taught about emotions first. Teaching your child about different emotions is therefore an important phase of strengthening their ability to understand feelings and emotions in themselves and in others: How does anger feel like? How do I know when other people are angry?

There are easy ways to teach kids about emotions. Using everyday experiences to comment on other people's emotions is a simple way to talk to your child about emotions: " he sure looks angry"). Helping her put her own emotions into words is also a great way to foster her emotional IQ: " I know you're frustrated because you can't watch your favorite cartoon". This guide has easy to apply age-appropriate strategies to get the conversation about emotions going.

Remember that talking about your own emotions helps nurture emotional intelligence in your child and teaches them that big emotions are normal: " I'm feeling anxious because I have an important interview tomorrow ".

Also, it is important to introduce them to different emotions when they are calm rather than when they are in the middle of a meltdown.

Phase 2: Helping your child understand what triggers strong emotions

Your child cannot learn to effectively manage strong emotions if they do not understand where those emotions come from. Teaching them to identify their triggers is thus an important phase in fostering their emotional intelligence.

Different activities can help them learn to identify what triggers their emotion-driven behavior. Anything that can help keep track of their behavior, for example an anger/anxiety diary, is useful to help them better understand their behavior.

Here are some of the things you should pay attention to help develop your child's emotional intelligence

Offer guidance by proposing what they should be attentive to:

Exactly what happened?

How did you feel?

Rate your anger on a scale of 1 to 10

How did your body feel (a headache, stomach ache, nervous, sweaty palms, heart racing)?

What did you do?

Phase 3: Helping your child identify appropriate ways to respond to anger and anxiety

Anger and anxiety are normal human reactions and can even be beneficial. Addressing these emotions is not about suppressing them - it is about teaching your child how to manage them effectively. As far as possible, let your child choose their own calm-down strategy and propose many options to allow them to change if need be. If they are having trouble choosing a strategy, don't hesitate to propose something. Remember that the most effective strategies are those that are most in line with their personality.

A calm-down jar is an effective tool which can help your child learn to manage their anger by themselves. It is a jar in which you place different activities your child can refer to in order to manage strong emotions such as anger or anxiety.

The more ideas you have the better!

Brainstorm with your child and come up with appropriate and acceptable activities that they can engage in when facing strong emotions.

Place the ideas in an easily accessible jar they can use when need be.

An effective jar should have:

Visually calming activities: sand-timer, sensory jar, indoor fountain, etc.

Activities to unwind: Blow bubbles, blow a balloon, color a mandala, read a book, listen to music, etc.

Activities to comfort: Favorite toys, hugs

Activities to focus attention elsewhere: Painting, dot-to-dot pictures, whistling, etc

Physical activities to release tension: skip rope, jump on a trampoline, push against a wall, etc.

Things to hold or squeeze: Stress balls, slime, etc.

Oral sensory activities: chewing gum, apples, etc.

Age-appropropriate resources can help you foster your child's emotional development skills. The Emotions Kit is an extensive collection of resources that proposes age-appropriate tools to communicate with your child about emotions in all the three phases mentioned above. It proposes games, worksheets, practical tips, and numerous tools you can easily adopt at home to strengthen their ability to deal with strong emotions more effectively. If your child is stuggling with anger, the Anger Expression Management Bundle will give you the tools you need to deal with each of your child's "zones of anger" more effectively.
Knowing when to seek professional help
Strong emotions such as anger and anxiety are normal human reactions, and building emotional intelligence in your child is not about teaching her to suppress difficult emotions but rather, showing her that emotions are normal. That said, strong emotions such as anger and anxiety can also point to more serious issues requiring professional intervention.

This is when to seek professional help:

When your child harms or threatens to harm herself or others

When her siblings are scared of her.

When she hurts animals "for fun"

When emotion-driven behavior is intense, frequent and long lasting.

When you fear the consequences of upsetting your child.

When family decisions revolve around "how your child will react"

When she breaks and damages things.

When her behavior consistently gets worse despite your attempts to control her behavior.

When you no longer know what to do to help

Additional resources
Why and How to Talk to Kids About Emotions This is how to tell whether your child's tantrums are a problem This Is How To Raise An Emotionally Intelligent Kid 50 Ways to Calm an Anxious Child Without Words (+PRINTABLE VISUAL ANXIETY CARDS) Five things you can do to foster your child's emotional safety
Scientific resources
A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality
Losing control: How and why people fail at self-regulation.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://selz.co/EJJdUMhnM" target="_blank"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Buy now&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

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Teaching Your Child to Manage Anger and Anxiety - Raising-independent-kids

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I bet you've heard the story about the smart fish. If you haven't, this is how it goes (Important disclaimer: I did not write this metaphorical story and I have been unable to find the original version. This is my adapted version after reading one version of the story here): There once lived a fisherman who [...]

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This is a MyHealthAlberta webpage on bedtime routine tips.

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Sleep: Helping Your Children—and Yourself—Sleep Well

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Children need about 9 to 14 hours of sleep each night, depending on their age. Teens need about 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night.footnote 1

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This is a MyHealthAlberta webpage on managing bedtime struggles.

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Overview

Many parents worry about their children's sleep. There is no "right" amount of sleep for children, because each child's needs are different. But some children have sleep problems that keep them, and often their families, from getting the sleep they need. Some sleep problems go away on their own, and others may need medical care.

Sleep problems affect children in different ways. When a child has night terrors, usually everyone in the house knows it. The child screams during sleep. And then when they're awake, the child doesn't remember crying or what caused it. Some children get out of bed during the night and start walking, even though they are sound asleep. Some children wet the bed while sleeping. Some children regularly stop breathing during sleep for 10 seconds or longer (sleep apnea).

Your doctor will work with you to find out what is causing your child's sleep problem. Sometimes tests or sleep studies are needed. For many children, getting regular exercise, eating well, and having a good bedtime routine relieves sleep problems. If you try these changes and your child still has problems, the doctor may prescribe medicine or suggest other treatment.

Follow-up care is a key part of your child's treatment and safety. Be sure to make and go to all appointments, and call your doctor or nurse advice line ( 811 in most provinces and territories) if your child is having problems. It's also a good idea to know your child's test results and keep a list of the medicines your child takes.

How can you care for your child at home?

Set up a bedtime routine to help your child get ready for bed and sleep. For example, read together, cuddle, and listen to soft music for 15 to 30 minutes before turning out the lights. Do things in the same order each night so your child knows what to expect.

Have your child go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning.

Keep your child's bedroom quiet, dark or dimly lit, and cool.

Limit activities that stimulate your child, such as playing and watching television, in the hours closer to bedtime.

Limit eating and drinking near bedtime.

If your child wakes up and calls for you in the middle of the night, make your response the same each time. Offer quick comfort, but then leave the room.

Avoid reading scary stories and watching scary programs that might cause your child to worry. Stress may cause nightmares.

Call your doctor or nurse advice line if you think your child is having a problem with a medicine.

Don't try to wake your child during a night terror. Instead, reassure and hold your child to prevent injury.

If your child sleepwalks, keep the windows and doors locked during sleep time.

If you think your child is overweight, talk to your doctor. Being overweight can cause sleep problems or make them worse.

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Sleep Problems in Children: Care Instructions

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Many parents worry about their children's sleep. There is no "right" amount of sleep for children, because each child's needs are different. But some children have sleep problems that keep them, and often their families, from getting the sleep they need. Some sleep problems go away on their own, and others may need medical care.

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This is a podcast by Dr. Becky, where she discussed bedtime struggles & how to manage them.

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This article talks about the importance of family meal times.

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This article talks about the association between nutrition and emotion regulation in school-aged children.

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The Link Between Nutrition, Mood, and Learning in School-Aged Children

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Tania Johnson | November 1st, 2025 How Food Shapes Mood, Focus, and Emotional Regulation Food fuels more than the body—it shapes how children feel, focus,

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The video shown in the presentation on the dopamine effect, related to screen time.

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Dopamine and Screen Time: Why Your Child Can’t Put the Device Down

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This is a Government website on tips for cyber security.

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These are helpful screen time guildeines from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

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Question: What are some screen time guidelines for social media applications?

Editor's Note: This question was originally answered in spring 2023 and has been updated in 2025 to include the most recent literature in this area as well as new resources that have been made available since this response was initially published.

Answer: It can be tempting to want a set number of hours on screens that is "safe" or healthy to guide your family's technology use. Unfortunately, there isn't enough evidence demonstrating a benefit from specific screen time limitation guidelines. For this reason, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated their media use recommendations in 2016. These evidence-based guidelines do not give a set screen time limit that applies to all children and teens.

Because children and adolescents use screen media for a variety of activities, including school, work, connecting with friends and family members, playing games, browsing social media, watching entertaining videos, learning new hobbies, reading the news, and more, rather than setting a guideline for specific time limits on digital media use, we recommend considering the quality of interactions with digital media and not just the quantity, or amount of time.

The Relationship Between Screen Use and Wellbeing

Overall, the relationship between time spent on screen media and negative health and wellbeing outcomes is complex and depends on many factors including:

This relationship also depends on the person and how their media use helps them grow, including their identity, social skills, thinking, and emotions.

Unfortunately, the research guiding our understanding of the impact of screen media on health and wellbeing is further complicated by inconsistent or inaccurate research measures. As research studies move forward, social media researchers must go beyond measurements of screen time to better understand how social media impacts health and well-being for adolescents.

Recommendations for Parents and Caregivers:

It is important to consider the specific activities that children and teens engage in on social media, and to support them in using social media in ways that strengthen their social, emotional, cognitive and identity development. When it comes to household rules around technology use, there is evidence that rules focusing on balance, content, co-viewing and communication are associated with better well-being outcomes than rules focused on screen time.

Explore the impact of social media on youth mental health.

Help your child practice media balance.

The 5 Cs of Media Use provides helpful suggestions for supporting youth with positive media use. For example, teens and caregivers can consider whether media use has been crowding out other important health behaviors, such as sleep or physical activity, which are both essential for healthy development. Rather than focusing on reducing screen time, families can consider how to crowd back in important activities, like building a healthy bedtime routine or spending time outside.

Families can also consider creating screen-free times and places, such as family mealtimes. The AAP Family Media Plan can help families set these priorities together.

Share with your teen this previous portal response about the impact of limiting time spent on social media.

Common Sense Education's unit on Media Balance and Well-being has lesson plans, activities, and family tip sheets for promoting media balance at different ages and stages.

Teach teens to take control of their digital media use.

The Glossary of Digital Media Platforms includes detailed information on design features of individual social media, video sharing, and gaming apps. Teens and families can use this tool to learn how to adjust settings to support balance and well-being, including turning on nudges to take a break, adding nighttime do-not-disturb settings, and limiting notifications. Using these strategies can help teens ensure that their media use is not crowding out other important activities like homework, sleep, and spending time on hobbies.

Common Sense Media also provides guidance on assessing the quality of a child's digital media use in "Are Some Types of Screen Time Better Than Others?".

Role-model positive media use and balance.

Healthy Parenting and Digital Media Use discusses how parents' use of digital media affects their children and offers insights on how to lead by example with your own digital habits.

Parents can also consider reading this guide from Raisingchildren.net for guidance on how to role-model positive media use and balance.

Educators who would like to directly engage youth about healthy social media use may find the following resources helpful:

Common Sense Media's Digital Citizenship curriculum covers topics including media balance & well-being, relationships, communication, and cyberbullying.

Teens & Tech is a free, evidence-based curriculum developed by the Winston National Center on Technology Use, Brain, and Psychological Development for middle school educators on how adolescent brain development affects technology use and well-being.

Ed Tech Triangle's model guides teachers and admins on spreading wellness and sharing resources about digital wellness in the classroom.

Media Power Youth's Screenshots curriculum is a media literacy curriculum for grades 6-8. It includes lesson plans, podcasts, a project, and an interactive notebook and focuses on thinking critically about social media messages, managing online conflict, exploring how digital media relates to substance use, and practicing empathy when navigating online challenges.

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Looking for screen time guidelines for social media? Instead of fixed limits, experts recommend focusing on the quality of kids' digital interactions. Learn additional tips and guidance for healthy, balanced media use.

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This is a guide for parents on how to model healthy screen time.

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What is healthy digital technology and screen use?

Healthy digital technology use is balanced and positive.

It's about what you use your technology and screens for, when you choose to use them, who you use them with, and how much time you spend using them. It's also about getting a healthy mix of non-digital and digital activities into your life.

How your approach to digital technology and screens influences children

Your choices about digital technology use and screen time can have a positive influence on the way your child uses screens. Children develop healthy habits for digital technology use and screen time when they see you and other key role models using screens in healthy, balanced ways.

You can have this kind of influence simply by making regular, screen-free time for your own activities and family activities, like walking, reading, eating and just talking. When you do this, it sends your child a couple of key messages:

There are many ways to entertain yourself, relax and have fun - and not all of them involve screens.

Family time is one of the most important ways to spend time.

And when you do use digital technology, it's important for your child to see you using it in productive, creative and social ways. For example, you might use your device to listen to music, draw, exercise or meditate. Or you might have a regular video call with extended family or a regular online gaming session with friends.

When you use digital technology in this way, it sends the message that digital technology use and screen time can be positive.

To grow and thrive, children need warm, responsive interactions with parents. But screens can sometimes get in the way of these kinds of interactions - for example, if parents interrupt conversations with children to check text messages. So when you're talking or playing with your child, it's great if you can put devices aside and really focus on what's important to your child.

Role-modelling healthy digital technology use and screen time: tips

Here are ideas for using digital technology and screens in healthy and positive ways. These ideas can help you set an example of balancing digital and non-digital activities for your child:
What you use screens for

Use screens in creative and healthy ways - for example, for creative activities like drawing, wellbeing activities like meditation or health activities like fitness tracking.

Avoid always using screens to entertain your child in situations like long car journeys or appointments. Try mixing it up with things like car karaoke, alphabet search, 'I spy', reading or drawing.

When you use screens

If you get a text message or social media notification while you're talking to someone, especially your child, wait until the conversation is finished before you check it.

Try not to have your phone, tablet or laptop in your bedroom at night. Charge your devices overnight in a family area, and teach your child to do the same.

Switch off the TV at family mealtimes or when it's 'on in the background'. You could try listening to music instead.

Who you use screens with

Use digital technology for keeping in touch with friends or family who live far away - for example, with weekly video calls or online board games.

Share screen time with your child. Playing a game, watching a show or making a playlist together lets you turn screen time into family time. This is a good balance for solo screen use.

How much time you spend using screens

Set aside some technology-free time each day, so you can be 'in the moment' with your child. This could be when your child gets home from school or you get home from work, during family mealtimes, when you're watching your child play sport, when you're at the park with your child and so on.

Work together with your child to create a family media plan. You could include things like no mobiles phone at mealtimes. Then make sure you follow the guidelines in the plan too!

Take breaks and move around regularly when you're using screens. And use your device at eye level for good posture.

Keep track of your screen time for a week. Include all your screen use - TV, video games, social media, texts and so on. If you think you're using screens more than you'd like to, reduce your use. Try logging out of social media apps to stop yourself from constantly checking them or put your phone in another room while you're working.

Role-modelling healthy social media use: tips

Healthy social media use can keep you connected with friends and interests, the latest news, your child's school and sports activities, and so on.

If you use and enjoy social media, there are plenty of ways you can be a role model for your child:

Regularly check the privacy settings on your social media accounts.

Take care of your digital footprint by being careful about the photos and comments you post and the photos and comments you're tagged in.

Make sure you're always respectful in your posts.

Talk about your social media use with your child. This will encourage your child to be open about their social media use too. If you share fun content with each other, it can be a great way to talk about the things you both like and think are important.

Talk with your child about following each other on social media. This can be a great way to be a part of your child's life and share interests. Younger teenagers might be OK with this, but older teenagers might not want you to follow them.

Ask your child for permission before you post a photo of them or share information about them on social media.

If your screen time feels out of control, try to change the ways you use technology. If you're finding it hard, look for support from friends, family or a professional. If your child sees you trying to manage your screen time, this sets a good example for them too.

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Parents, screen time and digital technology use: role-modelling for children

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Healthy digital technology use is balanced and positive. It's about what you use your technology and screens for, when you choose to use them, who you use them with, and how much time you spend using them. It's also about getting a healthy mix of non-digital and digital activities into your life.

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These are the 5C's of media use discussed in the presentation for school-aged children (5-10 years).

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Dr. Becky - Managing Screen Time Meltdowns

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Dr. Becky - Managing Screen Time Meltdowns

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This is a podcast by Dr. Becky on managing screen time meltdowns.

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How Do I Handle Screen Time With My Kids?

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This is a free resource on creating a family media plan.

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​Use this Family Media Plan to create a personalized plan for how all kinds of media are used in your family. ​​

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This is the 24-Hour Movement Guideline by the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology.

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24-Hour Movement Guidelines – Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines

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The Whole Brain Child by Dr. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson

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The Whole Brain Child by Dr. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson

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This is a sample media plan that I often show to clients to get an idea of what the family media plan looks like.

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These are the winter screen time alternative activities shown in the presentation.

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These are the summer screen time alternative activities shown in the presentation.

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Child & Parent Emotion Regulation Article

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Child & Parent Emotion Regulation Article

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This is an article showing an association between parent & child emotion regulation.

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This is an article showing an association between parent & child emotion regulation.

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These are ideas for a balanced school lunch.

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Nutrition & Mental Well-Being in School-Aged Children

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Nutrition & Mental Well-Being in School-Aged Children

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This article explores the impact of nutrition on the mental well-being of school-aged children.

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This article explores the impact of excessive screen time on child development.

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Impact of Screen Time on Childhood Development

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Impact of Screen Time on Childhood Development

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This article explores the impact of excessive screen time on childhood developmental domains.

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Impact of Screentime on Childhood Development

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The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

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The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

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This book was not mentioned in the presentation, but is a helpful resource on understanding the link between social media/screen time & childhood development.

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This book was not mentioned in the presentation but it is a helpful workbook which includes effective tools and resources to help kids and teens develop a growth mindset.

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This article addresses the link between sleep, physical health, and mental health.

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Getting enough quality sleep at the right times can help protect your mental health, physical health, quality of life, and safety. Learn how to figure out if you're getting enough sleep, what symptoms children show, and sleep and your health in this topic.

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Article on Sleep, Memory, and Language in Children

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Article on Sleep, Memory, and Language in Children

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This article discusses associations between sleep in childhood (up to age 3yrs.), language development, and memory.

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Article on Effects of Sleep on Vocabulary in School-Aged Children

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Article on Effects of Sleep on Vocabulary in School-Aged Children

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This article looks at the impact of sleep on word retention & generalization in school-aged children, including the impact of napping at different ages.

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Research School of Psychology, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

In the first few years of life children spend a good proportion of time sleeping as well as acquiring the meanings of hundreds of words. There is now ample evidence of the effects of sleep on memory in adults and the number of studies demonstrating the effects of napping and nocturnal sleep in children is also mounting. In particular, sleep appears to benefit children's memory for recently-encountered novel words. The effect of sleep on children's generalization of novel words across multiple items, however, is less clear. Given that sleep is polyphasic in the early years, made up of multiple episodes, and children's word learning is gradual and strengthened slowly over time, it is highly plausible that sleep is a strong candidate in supporting children's memory for novel words. Importantly, it appears that when children sleep shortly after exposure to novel word-object pairs retention is better than if sleep is delayed, suggesting that napping plays a vital role in long-term word retention for young children. Word learning is a complex, challenging, and important part of development, thus the role that sleep plays in children's retention of novel words is worthy of attention. As such, ensuring children get sufficient good quality sleep and regular opportunities to nap may be critical for language acquisition.

Introduction

Sleep provides children with numerous benefits (e.g., Touchette et al., 2007; Fondell et al., 2011; Jansen et al., 2011) and is associated with both healthy brain development and neuropsychological functioning (e.g., Dahl, 1999; Siegel, 2005; Hill et al., 2007; Galland et al., 2012). One area of early development that particularly benefits from sleep is language acquisition. Several studies demonstrate that sleeping shortly after exposure to new words or new word forms (e.g., cathedruke) contributes to the integration of words into the existing lexicons of adults (e.g., Dumay and Gaskell, 2007, 2012) and school-aged children (e.g., Brown et al., 2012; Henderson et al., 2012), though wakeful rest can also benefit retention (e.g., Dewar et al., 2014). Napping shortly after exposure to words also helps toddlers abstract the structure of an artificial language (e.g., Gómez et al., 2006; Hupbach et al., 2009, see also Fischer et al., 2006 with adults).

KEY CONCEPT 1. Retention
Retention is the recognition of previously-encountered information after a delay. Word retention often refers to the ability to recognize and correctly indicate a previously-seen object in a context different to the one in which it was originally encountered upon hearing the name of that object.

Sleeping shortly after exposure to new material also helps children retain the meanings of individual words. For example, in a recent study exploring word retention, Williams and Horst (2014) read illustrated stories containing novel words to 3-year-old children, who then either napped or remained awake. Children who napped shortly after hearing the new words retained them significantly better than their wakeful peers when tested approximately 2.5 h after hearing the stories and also 24 h after hearing the stories. The benefit of sleep remained significant 7 days after children had heard the stories. Clearly, then, providing children with the opportunity to sleep following exposures to new words has dramatic consequences for children's word learning.

KEY CONCEPT 2. Word learning
Word learning may refer to many different types of word knowledge and usage, but often refers to forming an association between a word and referent and the gradual strengthening of that association to enable accurate word or referent recognition and/or word production at a later point in time.

Word Learning

Word learning is a complicated process involving a variety of steps from segmenting a new word from the continuous speech stream, to determining the meaning or referent from others' speech (or written text), to encoding and storing information about a new word such that it can be later recalled and retrieved on demand. Although children appear to complete these steps effortlessly, learning even a single new word is difficult-especially when children are learning multiple words in parallel (see e.g., Axelsson and Horst, 2013) as is often the case in word learning from storybooks. In the literature, "word learning" is used to refer to many different types of word knowledge and usage, including retention, generalization and production. For our purposes we are restricting this review to word retention (recognizing the same word or referent later or again) and word generalization (extending a word to a new referent). Both retention and generalization usually occur at a later point in time than the original learning event (though some studies examine generalization in real-time, e.g., Samuelson and Smith, 2005; Samuelson and Horst, 2007) and research into these processes should occur in a new context to ensure robust learning has occurred. Importantly, retention involves the integration of new information (e.g., individual words and referents) into existing memory networks, while generalization typically involves forming a gist of the word's associations and relationships with multiple items (e.g., extension of a word to similar items from the same category) and therefore requires less focus on the individual exemplars ( Stickgold and Walker, 2013). Retention is not necessarily a prerequisite for generalization (e.g., Twomey, 2012).

KEY CONCEPT 3. Generalization
Generalization involves extracting the statistical regularity between individual items or in the sequential order of items. In relation to word learning, generalization involves extending the association of a word and its referent to similar items from the same category.

Sleep and Word Retention

Sleep plays a key role in enhancing, stabilizing, and integrating new information into existing memory networks ( Walker, 2009; Stickgold and Walker, 2013), facilitating recall of newly-encoded information at a later point in time ( Wilhelm et al., 2013). There are copious studies demonstrating the importance of sleep in the integration of new information and the strengthening or consolidation of new information, henceforth referred to as " memory consolidation" (e.g., Diekelmann et al., 2009 for reviews; Stickgold and Walker, 2013), but there are fewer studies explaining the underlying mechanisms of sleep-related learning. A number of studies provide evidence of the particular sleep stages that enhance specific types of memory, such as implicit or procedural skill memory and declarative memories for explicit information accessible to consciousness, for instance, facts, episodes, and semantic information, such as word meanings (e.g., Walker, 2009; Stickgold and Walker, 2013). Adult sleep is characterized by 90 min sleep-stage cycles made up of four non-rapid eye movement NREM sleep stages: Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3 slow wave sleep (SWS), Stage 4 (SWS), and rapid eye movement (REM, see Dement and Kleitman, 1957; Hill et al., 2007). These sleep stages are apparent in infants from 6-months of age, but the sleep cycles typically last 50-60 min ( Jenni et al., 2004) gradually increasing to 75 min at 2-years ( Louis et al., 1997) and 90 min at 6-years ( Montgomery-Downs et al., 2006). In adults, REM sleep aids in retention of weak semantic associations ( Stickgold et al., 1999) and greater sleep spindle activity in Stage 2 sleep is associated with enhanced integration of novel word forms of previously acquired words, such as cathedruke, into existing lexicons ( Tamminen et al., 2010). In children, greater Stage 2 sleep spindle activity is associated with memory for object locations ( Kurdziel et al., 2013). More precisely, Kurdziel et al. (2013) found nap-related benefits in memory for object locations particularly amongst habitual nappers when naps occurred within 3-5 h of exposure. The naps were largely characterized by SWS, and the increase in performance was positively related to Stage 2 sleep spindle density. There was no evidence of sleep-related benefits in the children who did not nap-even following overnight sleep. Interestingly, proportions of SWS, a stage that is important for declarative memory (see below), remain largely the same across the first 2-years of life, while REM decreases and Stage 2 increases ( Louis et al., 1997). Therefore, changes in the durations of sleep stages in the early years could have implications for different developmental domains.

KEY CONCEPT 4. Memory consolidation
Memory consolidation refers to the strengthening and enhancement of information encoded. Sleep-related memory consolidation is specific to consolidation of information encountered prior to sleep, such that recognition, retention or generalization is superior to that seen after an equivalent period of time awake.

Napping shortly after hearing new words aided retention for 3-year-old children up to 1 week later (see Figure 2). Note, the immediate word learning accuracy scores did not differ for children who later went on to nap or stay awake in either story condition. That is, there were no differences present between the sleep and wake groups immediately after exposure to the stories. Further, the inclusion of this baseline measure helped to tease apart whether sleep is improving children's memory for word meanings or whether or not an equivalent period awake is leading to forgetting (see, Stickgold, 2013 for a similar argument). As can be seen in the figure (comparing baseline to 2.5 h later): both memory consolidation and forgetting during wakefulness are occurring. In particular, reading before nap time was especially helpful for children who were presented with the new words in multiple, different stories-a learning situation already shown to be very difficult compared to hearing the same story repeatedly ( Horst et al., 2011). Napping soon after reading allowed children who faced this difficult word learning situation (synthesizing word meanings from across different stories) to perform as well as their peers who heard the same stories but remained awake.

Independent of the effect of sleep, hearing the same (repeated) stories as opposed to hearing different (non-repeated) stories accounted for 41% of the variance in retention scores 1 week later. This advantage for contextual repetition replicates previous research in shared storybook reading ( Robbins and Ehri, 1994; Sénéchal, 1997; Horst et al., 2011; McLeod and McDade, 2011; Wilkinson and Houston-Price, 2013) and associative word learning (e.g., Axelsson and Horst, 2014) and is the subject of a separate focused review (i.e., Horst, 2013).

Recently, Horváth et al. (2015) also found a benefit for retention following sleep. Specifically, 16-month-old toddlers who napped within 90 min of exposure to two novel name-object pairs looked longer at the correct targets at test than peers who received the same training but stayed awake. In general, daytime naps are positively associated with greater vocabulary growth for this age group ( Horváth and Plunkett, 2016).

Sleeping shortly after exposure to new information enhances memory ( Talamini et al., 2008; Payne et al., 2012). However, it is sleep itself rather than time of day ( Gais et al., 2006) or time between exposure and sleep (e.g., Seehagen et al., 2015) that affects memory consolidation. Backhaus et al. (2008) trained 9- to 12-year-old children on lists of noun pairs in both the morning and the evening (i.e., before sleep). Children were significantly more accurate at cued recall for words they had learned in the evening than for words they had learned in the morning (see also, Ashworth et al., 2014). However, recall improved following sleep for both morning and evening training. Similarly, Henderson et al. (2012) trained 9-year-old children on lists of pseudo-words either in the morning or the evening. Children who learned the words in the evening (i.e., before sleep) were significantly more accurate on a recognition task than children who had learned the words in the morning. As in the Backhaus et al. (2008) study, performance improved for both groups following sleep and both groups continued to do well 1 week later. In another test of pseudo-word learning, ( Brown et al., 2012) found 7-year-old children's performance on cued recall tests also improved following sleep. In this case, children's cued recall was significantly better after a longer delay that included overnight sleep than after a shorter delay (3-4 h) that did not include sleep. Therefore, sleeping soon after exposure is critical, however this is yet to be investigated in detail and is worthy of future research (but see below and Hupbach et al., 2009).

Sleep deprivation can have a detrimental effect on the ability to encode and retain new information. Sleep deprivation affects the parts of the brain involved in executive functions such as the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, and posterior parietal systems as well as the hippocampus (see Goel et al., 2009, for a review). Walker and Stickgold (2006) deprived adult learners of sleep for 36 h. Despite having had two nights of sleep before encoding, sleep-deprived participants had poorer retention of a word list compared to controls. Even minimal sleep restriction in school-aged children can affect their neurobehavioral functioning as found by Sadeh et al. (2003). Children whose sleep was restricted for less than an hour for 3 consecutive nights, demonstrated poorer performance in tasks measuring memory, attention, and vigilance than children whose sleep was not restricted. Sleep is clearly important post-learning, but also affects children's subsequent ability to encode new information and strengthen memory representations of previously-exposed information. Given the gradual and protracted nature of word learning over time ( McMurray et al., 2012; Bion et al., 2013), regular naps and sufficient nocturnal sleep are likely to have important consequences for long-term retention of novel words. As such, it should be a concern that naps at preschools are increasingly being replaced by more time on curriculum instruction ( Kurdziel et al., 2013; Mednick, 2013).

The integration of novel words into long-term memory is clearly important for language acquisition and sleep appears to affect children's retention of novel words. However, another skill that is important for language development is the ability to generalize across instances (i.e., across different members of a category), so that children can flexibly extend their learning to other items and in other contexts ( Waxman and Booth, 2000; Twomey et al., 2014). There is evidence to suggest that sleep can also affect participants' capacity to generalize their knowledge of multiple items ( Darsaud et al., 2011).

Sleep and Generalization

Generalization occurs when learners extract a gist, detect statistical regularities between individual items or determine a rule in the relationship in a sequence of items ( Stickgold and Walker, 2013). Sleep aids in the integration of single items into existing memory networks, but it can also contribute to learners' generalization of the relationship between multiple items ( Stickgold, 2013). For example, in tests of memory for word lists, adult participants often experience "false memories" for words absent from the original list if presented with a series of semantically-related words (e.g., falsely remembering "fruit" after seeing "banana, ripe, berry, juice, basket, citrus," etc., Roediger and McDermott, 1995). Sleep enhances false memories for such semantically-related words ( Payne et al., 2009; Diekelmann and Born, 2010). This suggests that sleep reorganizes memory in such a way that a "gist" of the original list is retained ( Feld and Diekelmann, 2015). The memory for gist words following sleep is related to the number of specific words participants recognize from the original list, rather than the words that are rated as simply familiar ( Darsaud et al., 2011).

Sleep enhances both declarative and non-declarative memory (procedural and implicit), which is less accessible to consciousness, and can aid in the recognition of statistical relationships between items and in rule abstraction ( Stickgold and Walker, 2013; Feld and Diekelmann, 2015). For example, following sleep, adults demonstrate better implicit learning of a rule that governs the sequence of a series of different tones ( Durrant et al., 2011). There are few studies on the underlying mechanisms of sleep-related learning of generalizations, but the ASC theory is also applicable in the integration of multiple items into memory networks ( Stickgold and Walker, 2013). SWS is associated with the implicit learning of tone sequences ( Durrant et al., 2011), but REM sleep also promotes the recognition of associations between words in adults ( Cai et al., 2009).

The need for napping in the first few years of life coincides with a period of exposure to a vast number of novel words and sleep could be particularly helpful for children's memory consolidation of words as well as the abstraction of the rules involved in the relationship between words and the generalization of the meaning of words to multiple items ( Stickgold and Walker, 2013). Recently, Friedrich et al. (2015) found evidence of this with 9- to 16-month-old children. Children were presented with specific word-object pairs and words with several items belonging to particular categories (e.g., eight similar items associated with the word bofel). Before napping, children were sensitive to only the specific word-object pairs, but after napping (within 1.5 h of exposure) they also demonstrated retention of words and items from these categories indicating that sleep helps in the generalization of category items (see also Horváth and Plunkett, 2016). Children's category learning was also correlated with Stage 2 sleep spindles.

However, Werchan and Gómez (2014) recently observed a benefit for remaining awake in a word generalization study. Thirty-month-old toddlers were exposed to multiple exemplars from three different categories of novel objects and the category names. Different colored backgrounds were also used for each exemplar presentation, which increased the overall variability present in the learning phase. Toddlers were tested on their ability to generalize the new object names to novel, never-before-seen exemplars from the object categories either immediately or 4 h after the initial exposure to the novel objects. Among the toddlers who were tested after 4 h, half of the toddlers napped and half remained awake. Only toddlers who had remained awake successfully generalized the novel names. That is, napping did not facilitate novel name generalization in this task. The authors explain their findings in terms of forgetting facilitating abstraction (see also Vlach et al., 2012). This may be especially critical for young children who are prone to encoding both relevant (e.g., object shape) and irrelevant details (e.g., background color) during a task ( Gómez and Edgin, 2015). Thus, remaining awake may be more helpful for generalization than sleep among young children because wakefulness can help one forget irrelevant details ( Vlach et al., 2012; Werchan and Gómez, 2014).

How might we explain the discrepancy in findings between studies demonstrating benefits for sleep among 16-month-old children (e.g., Friedrich et al., 2015; Horváth and Plunkett, 2016) and benefits for wakefulness with 30-month-old children (e.g., Werchan and Gómez, 2014) for word generalization? One possibility is that these studies are capturing a period of instability in development. Both Dynamic Systems Theory ( Thelen and Smith, 1994) and Overlapping Waves Theory ( Chen and Siegler, 2000) argue that children progress through both periods of stability and instability-with periods of instability often occurring before qualitative changes in children's cognitive development. Periods of instability can also be observed within the same children (e.g., Martin et al., 2005; Adolph et al., 2008; Corbetta and Snapp-Childs, 2009). Toddlerhood and the preschool years are periods of rapid change, both in children's physical and cognitive development. It is also a period of change in sleep behavior with children dropping from two to only one nap by about 24-months of age and often giving up daytime sleep altogether by 42-months of age (see Weissbluth, 1995, for a review). Recently, several sleep researchers have argued that foregoing naps is an indication of cognitive maturity ( Lam et al., 2011; Kurdziel et al., 2013). That is, children give up their naps when they can handle the cognitive load of up to 12 consecutive hours of various input without specific periods of sleep or rest. In addition, daytime sleep may emit unique benefits for habitual nappers that it does not produce for other children. Like all aspects of development, there is seldom a sudden switch from one stage (e.g., habitual napper) to another (e.g., non-habitual napper). Thus, it makes intuitive sense that children are progressing through a period of cognitive instability precisely as their sleep behavior is changing. This instability may explain some of the discrepancies in the data with children. However, additional research is needed to help us better understand how sleep and wakefulness aid word generalization.

Improvement Over Time

Children's word learning performance in the Williams and Horst (2014) study did improve over the course of the week for both children who napped shortly after exposure to the storybooks and those who did not-though napping shortly after hearing the new words was a significant advantage. This pattern of results is consistent with other research showing a testing effect-even in the absence of feedback (e.g., Karpicke and Roediger, 2008). Specifically, repeated testing provides additional opportunities for encoding and retrieval of the information being learned as well as the potential for interference, alteration, or reconsolidation of the memories ( Stickgold and Walker, 2007). On this view, each retention test presented to children in the Williams and Horst (2014) study afforded children with an additional opportunity for the strengthening of association between the word-object pairs as well as potential interference. Indeed, children are not neural networks: children's learning does not "turn off" and we should expect some additional changes in associative strength in word-object pairs to also occur on test trials. In fact, the 4-alternative test trials presented by Williams and Horst (2014) were highly similar to training trials used in other studies, particularly those using cross-situational learning paradigms (e.g., Suanda et al., 2014). Thus, we should expect memory for the word-object associations to improve over time as a byproduct of repeated testing.

Conclusions

The effect of sleep on adults' declarative and implicit memory is well-established ( Feld and Diekelmann, 2015). The evidence for the effect of sleep on declarative and implicit memory in infants and children is also mounting ( Ashworth et al., 2014; Berkowitz et al., 2015; Gómez and Edgin, 2015) and in particular the influence of sleep on word learning. During infancy and early childhood, sleep is typically polyphasic, made up of naps, and nocturnal sleep ( Galland et al., 2012) and this is also a period when language acquisition undergoes huge developmental changes ( Fernald et al., 2006). Both napping and overnight sleep appear to strengthen children's memory for novel words. Word learning typically progresses slowly changing gradually from initial weak word-object associations that become increasingly stronger over time ( McMurray et al., 2012; Bion et al., 2013). This could explain why sleep is of benefit to word learning as sleep consolidation benefits are likely to be especially helpful for fragile memories-such as newly-formed representations of words only recently encountered. Regular exposure to novel words coupled with regular sleep phases are likely to contribute to the integration of novel words into children's lexicons (see e.g., Diekelmann et al., 2009).

More evidence is still needed to understand the underlying mechanisms involved in sleep-related word learning in early childhood, but the evidence so far implicating napping and good quality sleep in word learning needs to be brought into the spotlight for parents, health professionals, and educational policy makers (see also, Staton et al., 2016). Ensuring that children are provided with a structured nap and sleep schedule appropriate to their age is likely to have marked implications on their retention of newly encountered words, but also on their capacity to engage in new learning situations.

Author Contributions

All authors listed, have made substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like thank Jaclyn Swinton for helpful suggestions to the literature review.

Author Biography

Emma L. Axelsson is a lecturer in cognitive psychology at The Australian National University. Her research interest in cognitive development began while studying infant body representations for her B.A. (Hons) in Psychology at the University of Queensland and Ph.D. at the University of East London. Her other research interests include cognitive processes in word learning and sleep-related learning in both typical and atypical populations. She spent just under 10 years in the UK in a number of research roles in cognitive development and teaching positions. She is also involved in research on the early detection of developmental disorders in South Western Sydney at the University of New South Wales.

Jessica S. Horst earned her Ph.D. at the University of Iowa in 2007 and has since been a faculty member at the University of Sussex. Her interest in child language grew after she moved to Germany as a child with little knowledge of the German language. After obtaining her Abitur from a German Gymnasium, she then attended Boston University where she majored in Philosophy and Psychology with a minor in German Language and Literature. In addition to various articles on child language acquisition, she is also the author of The Psychology Research Companion: From Student Project to Working Life.

References

Touchette, É., Petit, D., Séguin, J. R., Boivin, M., Tremblay, R. E., and Montplaisir, J. Y. (2007). Associations between sleep duration patterns and behavioral/cognitive functioning at school entry. Sleep 30, 1213-1219. Available online at: http://www.journalsleep.org/ViewAbstract.aspx?pid=26943
PubMed Abstract
Twomey, K. E. (2012). An Investigation of Fast and Slow Mapping. Doctoral Thesis at the University of Sussex.

Walker, M. P. (2009). "Sleep-dependent memory processing," in Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, ed L. R. Squire (Elsevier), 1055-1065.

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