Recently the AAP released the results of a new study that indicated many parents are not following safe sleep guidelines. Of course, I have a few thoughts on this! Read the study HERE: My advice? Make the sleep guidelines more realistic! If parents aren't listening, it means they are desperate for sleep and the recommendations are falling short without the "village" we once had. Instead, tell parents HOW to co-sleep safely, if they need to. People across the globe do it! (You can read our
Sleep News
Should You Give Your Baby or Toddler Melatonin to Sleep?
The team members here at the Baby Sleep Site® work hard to stay on top of the latest news and trends related to sleep - particularly baby and toddler sleep. It's important to us that we're always using current research, recommendations, and best practices in our work with families. So when one of our sleep consultants passed a local news story about an emerging sleep trend along to the rest of us, we were eager to read it! Imagine our surprise, though, when we read the news headline: Parents
Sleep Problems and Depression, Even in Children
This isn't a post about just children and sleep, per se, but the ongoing emphasis that healthy sleep habits are important for all of us, adults and children. I was doing some reading and have found that new studies are finding that it was once thought that sleep problems were a symptom of depression, but they are now considering that sleep problems may precede depression. In other words, if you begin to have substantial sleep problems, The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) strongly
Sleep Disorders Linked to Children’s Behavior Problems
Science Daily recently reported in this article that certain sleep disorders are linked to behavior issues in kids. The study showed that children with sleep disordered breathing such as snoring or sleep apnea and who were also overweight, did not sleep enough, or had another sleep problem such as insomnia, were more likely to have behavior issues. More than half of the participants with sleep disordered breathing who were studied were either overweight or at risk for being overweight (see
Don’t Sleep, Be Fat…Maybe
Time Magazine reported that a Harvard study (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-weight/sleep/index.html) just concluded that too little sleep in babies and toddlers might be linked to obesity. And, they said TV viewing heightened the effect. No surprise there. At first I was skeptical about this study of the link between sleep and obesity. After all, we are also living in a fast food era, watch hours of television, sit behind a computer for hours blogging, tweeting, and surfing