According to new study babies that wake up in the night and need less sleep are smarter

Publish Date: Saturday, 10 August 2019, 11:36AM

If your baby seems has a tendency to keep you up at all hours of the night, don’t fret, it could just mean that they are highly intelligent!

According to new research bubs that smarter and more gifted tend to need less sleep and wake up throughout the night time.

Speaking with BuzzFeed News on his findings, University of Bristol Professor, Peter Fleming – who specialises in infant health and development - revealed that there seems to be a connection between "very high levels of developmental and intellectual achievement and not sleeping throughout the night."

"Human infants are not designed to sleep for long periods, it’s not good for them," Fleming continued.

"There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that there is any benefit to anybody from having a child that sleeps longer and consistently.

"That’s not perhaps what most parents would like to hear."

Fleming also noted that a lot of babies prefer to be awake during the night and sleep while the sun’s up because it means they get more attention from their parents – who are normally busy during the day.

"Biologically that’s a big advantage because they will have more attention from their two primary caregivers at that time of day than at any other because there are fewer distractions," he told Buzzfeed News.

"From a biological point of view what the baby is doing is completely normal and sensible. It just doesn’t fit in with our 21st-century expectations."

And it turns out that it’s not just infants, but adults as well who aren’t supposed to sleep for long hours at night either.

According to Professor Decia F Narvaez, who is a psychology lecturer at Notre Dame University: "Adults don’t sleep through the night either; they just forget that they’re waking up routinely."

"We jam all our sleep into eight hours because we work during the day and that’s just not normal if you look at the history of humanity."

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