Archive for the 'Sleep & Children' Category

—-Here are some tips to help your child sleep!

Many parents find it as a big struggle to get their child to bed at night.

Your child play, whine and at times they even cry and repeatedly get out of their bed.

Actually, there are many ways to find better solution for your problem.

But, here are few effective and also easy tips to help you in getting your child sleep in their beds, without troubling you.

Initially, it can become a bit tough task for you, but soon after implementing these tips, you can enjoy your nights in your bed while your child is in good sleep peacefully in their bed.

1. If your child is newborn, try to limit the amount of time that your child sleeps in their bed, if possible. This will certainly help you later and most essentially, it can also assist you to avoid the possibility of sudden infant death syndrome, which is the most common concern for many parents.

Sleep apnea is very dangerous and even fatal condition for adults.

But, if it takes place in infants, it creates a whole set of other problems.

Sleep apnea in infants not only restricts the flow of oxygen from the brain and potentially causes damage to the brain, but also leads to death.

Sleep apnea in adults can be detected and treated easily.

When it comes to sleep apnea in children, it is split into two categories, apnea of prematurity and apnea of infancy.

It is often difficult to detect the symptoms of sleep apnea in children and also makes the treatment much more difficult for you as well as for your doctor.

Is there any clue to identify the problem?

Actually, it is quite normal for all newborns to have pauses in breathing. But if your baby has apnea of prematurity, the heart rate drops below 80 per minute.

As a result, your kid’s skin color turns to pale bluish color. So, when this kind of abnormal breathing occurs in your infant, either he may start to breathe by himself, or needs someone’s help to restart his breathing.

Raising kids can be a touchy subject to discuss. Every parent has their own philosophy in raising children.

Some of you can be more lenient while other parents can be strict.

As soon as your baby returns from hospital, you’ll start making choices based on your belief and values.

In the similar way, some of you can be totally against co-sleeping, while others consider it as a part of attachment parenting.

However, there are two sides to this particular co-sleeping issue. You can have benefits such as healthy form of parent-child relationship from safe co-sleeping.

But, for some families, co-sleeping can prove inconvenient and also dangerous, at times.

Is co-sleeping safe?

Despite of possible benefits, the U.S. Consumer product safety commission warns parents not to encourage co-sleeping in their children and it is not recommended to place the newborns to sleep in adult beds.

This sort of co-sleeping practice can put your child at risk of suffocation and strangulation. Even, the American Academy of pediatrics agrees with it.

However, in many non-western cultures, co-sleeping is wide spread practice. It is believed that the differences in mattresses, bedding and other sleeping and cultural practices may account to lower the risks involved with co-sleeping.

According to new study by Australian researchers, a lack of sleep can have a bad affect on the ability of children to both learn and interact at school.

The new study by researchers from the Centre for Community Child Health at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne, has revealed that nearly a quarter of children aged six and seven have poor sleeping habits, which has a major effect on their health, behaviour and learning ability.

The researchers said that almost 25% of six and seven year olds have trouble sleeping and those with the most persistent sleep issues suffer the most serious health, behavior and learning problems according to their parents and teachers.

According to the researchers, a lack of sleep affects concentration and how children interact with peers and teachers.

They say previous research had shown children are more likely to drop out of school if they had a poor early transition to formal education and if they have enough sleep children are able to make the transition and take on the workload while their brains are still growing and taking in a lot of information.

Read more information at News Medical

Did you notice your kid grinding teeth severely in sleep? This type of grinding teeth in sleep or during extreme stress conditions is commonly referred as bruxism.

If you are anxious about bruxism in your kid, then don’t need to be because this is the most common condition experienced by many children and it doesn’t cause any serious harm to your kid’s health.

However, teeth grinding is mainly caused when you experience severe stress or anxiety.

Usually, bruxism happens in sleep and often caused by abnormal biting or crooked teeth. Not only children, even adults can experience this sort of teeth grinding at sometime in their life.

How does bruxism affect your kid’s tooth health?

Normally, bruxism doesn’t cause any harm to your child’s teeth. Most of the bruxism cases usually go undetected without any adverse effects. But, at times, your kid can experience mild earache or morning headaches.

However, the grinding sound made by your kid can become most bothersome issue for you and also for your other family members.

If your kid is experiencing extreme levels of bruxism, it can lead to increased temperature sensitivity, chip teeth and also results in diminishing of tooth enamel.

Sleep-related breathing disorders (SRBD) are very common in children, occurring in up to 30 percent of children. SRBD ranges in severity from primary snoring to OSA.

In adults, SRBD is associated with hypertension and increased risk for cardiovascular disease. These findings highlight the importance of considering the long-term cardiovascular effects of any severity of SRBD in children

The 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) finds that all severities of SRBD in children are associated with elevated blood pressure during sleep compared with non-snoring control children.

The study focused on 88 children between seven and 13 years of age, including 68 referred for the assessment of SRBD and 20 non-snoring controls. Routine polysomnography, or an overnight sleep test, was performed, and mean arterial pressure was continuously recorded.

Children were divided into groups according to obstructive apnea/hypopnea index: control children, primary snoring, mild obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and moderate/severe OSA.

According to the results, compared with the non-snoring controls, SRBDs of any severity elevate the blood pressure of children during sleep.

It is important to make sure that your child gets enough sleep and sleeps well. The value of sleep can be measured by your child’s smiling face, happy nature and natural energy. A tired child may have development or behavior problems.

Different types of allergies can keep your children awake. These allergies cause itchy eyes, watery nose, and sneezing. When your child has these symptoms with allergies, their sleep is disturbed.

With disturbed sleep, their daily functioning such as performance in school, mood, energy, concentration and ability to think are affected.

One can affect with allergies from environment or from the food your child eats. Allergic rhinitis, a common child allergy, is an inflammation of nasal passages that occurs when your child’s body over reacts to an allergen such as pollen, dust mites, dander etc.

When swelling of nasal passages takes place, air flow is blocked, causing congestion. Nasal congestion can affect child’s sleep in many ways. Nasal congestion makes difficulty in breathing through nose.

Sleep problems are common among children. As a parent, you will always worry how to make your child sleep all the night. Some children have chronic sleep problems, which makes them, sleep deprived.

Some of the signs to identify child’s sleep problem

• If your child wakes up frequently during night
• If your child snores loudly or face difficulty in breathing while asleep
• If you spend too much time to help your child in falling asleep
• If your child’s mood, behavior and school performance varies
• If you are losing sleep due to your child’s sleeping patterns
• If your child begins to wet the bed

In REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, children wake up crying. You feel that they need help and attend your child. You try to help your child sleep by rocking, feeding, holding or lying down with your child. Therefore, this becomes a habit and your child depends on you to fall asleep.