The risk of becoming overweight for preschool children is twice if they get less than 12 hours ‘sleep. Some parents may unintentionally contribute to their child’s sleep problems by taking steps proposed to relieve the child that lead to disrupted sleep.

These are the findings of two reports in April’s special issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, which is related to children and sleep.

“The blend of too little sleep and too much TV is linked with obviously high risk of obesity,” stated Dr. Elsie M. Taveras, an assistant professor of ambulatory care and prevention at Harvard Medical School and author of the first study.

For the study, Taveras and her colleagues collected data on 915 children whose mothers reported on their child’s sleeping habits during first two years of life. By this information, researchers were able to find how much sleep the children had each day between 6 months and 2 years of age.

On average, the children who slept 12.3 hours a day, 83 were overweight when they reached 3 years of age. The researchers found that 3-year-olds who slept less than 12 hours a day as babies weighed more for their age and sex, compared with children who slept 12 hours a day or more as infants.

Besides this, infants who watched two or more hours of television a day had a 16 percent higher risk of becoming overweight, compared to a 1 percent risk for babies who didn’t watch TV, Taveras stated.

Valerie Simard, of the Hopital du Sacre-Coeur de Montreal and the University of Montreal, and colleagues found In the second study that parents’ manners at bedtime were associated to sleep strife of their children.

The researchers had the parents of 987 children fill out questionnaires regarding their children’s sleeping habits each year from the time the children were 5 months old till they were 6 years old. They found that sleep strife among very young children (5 to 17 months old) was mainly due to “maladaptive parenting behaviors,” such as the mother being present when the child was going to sleep, or feeding the child after he or she woke up.
In another study in the journal, Australian researchers discovered that children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder were more expected to have sleep problems than children without that disorder.
A fourth study, led by Alice M. Gregory of the University of London, discovered that children who have less sleep are more likely to have indications of anxiety, depression and aggression later in life. Among 2,076 children studied, the researchers discovered that those who had sleep problems when they were 4 to 16 years of age get higher on measures of fretfulness, depression and aggressive behavior when they were 18 to 32 years of age.

According to the author “The results suggest that children reported to sleep for short periods may be at risk for later difficulties,” One expert thinks that good sleeping habits for babies are very important and need to be started early.
Halbower reckons good sleep behaviors for babies need to be taught to parents before the child is born.

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