Word: sleepings
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Every new parent knows how difficult it can be to get a fussy baby to sleep, but new research suggests that a parent's best efforts may only be exacerbating the problem - and that inadequate sleep in childhood can have long-lasting health effects. "It is very hard to let your child cry it out when they are toddlers," says Dr. Elsie Taveras of Harvard Medical School, referring to parents' tendency to pick up their children or bring them into the family bed to help them sleep. "But if you approach it differently - 'I am not even going to start...
That point is central to a new study by Valérie Simard of Hôpital de Sacré-Coeur in Montréal, which examines the link between parents' bedtime behavior and sleep disturbances in children during infancy and early childhood. Simard administered yearly questionnaires to 987 parents, whose children were 5 months old at the start of the study. She found that certain "maladaptive" parental habits - such as the mother staying with the child until he or she fell asleep, or the parent giving a child food or drink upon nighttime awakening - appeared to develop in response...
...says, "However, most often, children at 29 to 41 months do not wake up because they are hungry." According to Simard's study, children whose parents fed them when they woke up in the middle of the night at age three were more likely to have nightmares and short sleep times at age four...
Babies who grew accustomed to falling asleep with a parent in the room, being held until they fell asleep, or being taken into a parent's bed when they couldn't sleep were also more likely as older children to have trouble falling asleep and to sleep fewer hours during the night. "Co-sleeping with the child does not seem to be a good solution for comforting a child after night awakenings," Simard says. But that doesn't mean that children should be left to wail endlessly, or that parents should never console them. "It might be appropriate...
...benefits of adequate sleep in infancy and childhood extend far beyond any single night of rest. According to a burgeoning body of research, children who don't sleep enough may be at risk for health problems later in life. Two additional reports, also appearing in the current issue of Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, suggest that children's sleeplessness may be associated with an increased risk of being overweight and having emotional and behavioral difficulties in adolescence and adulthood...