There are 70 million Americans with sleep disorders who would like nothing more than to relax at night. Now there’s more reason to keep you up late.

People who sleep fewer than six hours or more than nine hours a night are more likely to have health problems, according to the largest government study linking obesity to irregular sleep.

Health problems also include higher rates of smoking and alcohol use among those who sleep too little or too much.

The report finds that restorative value of sleep has been underappreciated in public health recommendations.

In time of stress, the body is known to hold onto fat stores. That’s why diets often result in weight gain. The lack of sleep may also create a similar stressful situation. Expect to see more emphasis on eight hours a night as a key to good health.

The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics surveyed 87,000 Americans from 2004 to 2006.

Among the findings:

* Smoking rates were highest for those who got under six hours of sleep a night. 31 percent were smokers. Heavy sleepers included 26 percent who smoked. The average rate of U.S. smokers is 21 percent. Among those who slept an average of eight hours, 18 percent were smokers.

* Obesity rates for light sleepers were 33 percent, for heavy sleepers 26 percent and 22 percent for normal sleepers.

* Alcohol use among the light sleepers was the heaviest. Regular and heavy sleepers have about the same rate of alcohol use.

* Exercise rates were low for those who slept a lot, worse than regular or light sleepers. Health problems or being elderly age may account for that

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine finds an increasing number of obese youth are not getting enough sleep. Obesity rates among children and teens have doubled in the last 30 years and AASM says sleep may be as important a component in fighting fat as diet and exercise.

Infants to 11 months need 14 to 15 hours of sleep a night; toddlers 12-14 hours; preschool children 11-13 hours and adolescents 9 hours. Adults should get seven to eight hours of sleep a night.

For those who have trouble falling to sleep follow these rules:

* Find a consistent bed time to go to sleep and wake up

* Keep the room completely dark free of lights from clocks or cable boxes

* Keep the room cooler

* Do not consume caffeine, colas or chocolate before bed or in the evening

* Take a break of at least an hour before bedtime from electronics

Also for children:

* Avoid videos or TV shows that are not age appropriate

* Use a half hour before bedtime for a bedtime routine and to read, interact and be close

* Do not let your child fall asleep while being held, rocked or nursed

* Avoid hunger at bedtime

Source: InjuryBoard.com, FL
http://www.injuryboard.com/national-news/cdc-sleep.aspx?googleid=238656

Over the last decade or so there has been mounting concern about the effect of television and videos on young children.

A huge increase in television programmes now available which are particularly aimed at young infants has occurred, despite warnings from experts that children younger than 2 years should not watch any television at all.

Along with the plethora of such programmes has come more and more evidence of the potential adverse effects of television exposure on young children.

Researchers in the U.S. are now saying because infants in low-income families are watching television or videos, with a supposedly ‘educational’ basis, their mothers rarely speak to them.

Lead author Dr. Alan L. Mendelsohn says many of the programmes marketed as educational have limited data to support such claims and these claims were even less so if no co-viewing with a parent took place.

Dr. Mendelsohn and his colleagues set out to measure the verbal interaction between mother and infants associated with media exposure and maternal co-viewing; to do so they carried out an analysis of 154 low socio-economic status mothers-infant pairs who were taking part in a long-term study on early child development.

It was revealed that over one 24-hour period, 149 of 154 mothers reported that their 6-month-old infants had a total of 426 exposures to television or videos.

These included 139 exposures to educational programs for young children; 46 to non-educational programs for young children; 205 to programs for school-aged children, teenagers or adults; and 36 to unknown programs.

The researchers found that of those 426 television and video exposures, mothers talked to their infants during only 101 of them.

They say their findings support their hypothesis that interactions were most commonly reported in association with educational content, especially programs that had been co-viewed; however half of the exposures consisted of programs not intended for young children.

Even when they were intended for young children they did not involve frequent interactions when they were co-viewed.

The researchers say the findings are important, because parent-infant interactions are associated with long-term developmental-behavioural outcomes and they say verbal exchanges happen more often with reading and playing with toys.

The researchers say given the large amount of media exposure and low verbal interaction, more research is called for to determine whether such media exposure is of benefit to young children.

They say programs with educational content were no more likely to be co-viewed than were other programs and the research does not support the development of infant-directed educational programmes on the basis that they increase co-viewing and interaction.

The study is published in the current issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Internal Medicine.

Source: News-Medical.net, Australia
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=38136

It’s one of the first things every new parent wants to know: How do I calm my crying baby, especially at bedtime. Many have heard we should just let them “cry it out.” But is that really best for your baby?

“A long-standing myth is the idea that if you pick up a crying child, you are really hurting this child. You are spoiling the child, you are reinforcing the whining, this crying and you’re going to create this crying baby and you should just kind of keep your distance. Then they will become strong and independent,” said Dr. John Gottman, Gottman Institute. “Just the opposite is true. We have learned that if the parent is a source of comfort, children feel comforted and safe and they go off by themselves and become strong and independent.”

OK, so we shouldn’t just let them “cry it out.” When they’re older, apparently we should also work harder at “talking it out.” “Time-outs,” say experts, are not the best way to discipline your little one.

“One of the things we encourage parents to do instead of time outs is time ins, which is a way of supporting a child to stay in a relationship rather than feeling abandoned in some way, to begin to think that there’s somebody that wants to work through things with them,” said Dr. Kent Hoffman, Marycliff Institute.

So don’t just send your child to his room. Really talk through the problem, until it’s resolved. And what about overall communication with your child? Most of us grew up with mom or dad running the show and junior just expected to follow along.

But the experts say parent-child communication should not be a one-way street.

“If they are understood by the parents and communication goes both ways, what happens really is the channel of communication is always kept open so the children, if they are in trouble, if they are going through a difficult experience, they can talk to their parents about it,” said Gottman.

From talking to toys: Do kids really need all those elaborate ‘educational’ toys to thrive? The experts say not at all. When it comes to toys, they say the simplest ones are often best.

“Now blocks have never, ever made the claim that they teach language or even, for that matter, make young engineers out of kids. It’s just about fun,” said Dr. Dimitri Christakis, Seattle Children’s Hospital. “But that kind of interactive play is really vital to children’s cognitive development. And it’s very much missing from the kind of media products that are targeting infants right now.”

And what about those media products? Can TV, especially so-called educational children’s shows, really be good for babies?

“There isn’t any evidence at all that infant TV viewing is helpful or beneficial to them in any way,” said Christakis. “In fact, the best available evidence suggests that it’s harmful.”

Remember the phrase “Father knows best?” Well, maybe not always. The experts say one of the best gifts a parent can give a child of any age is to simply say, “I was wrong, I’m sorry,” then work together on making it right.

Source: KING5.com, WA
http://tinyurl.com/3w3d7m

Targets for “toddler technology” skills laid down by the Government, which will require children to master basic computer skills by the age of 4 and understand how to use a television remote control, pose serious risks to child development, experts have said.

Aric Sigman, a psychologist and author of Remotely Controlled, said that the Government’s new early years curriculum, which requires underfives to be taught on computers, risked creating a generation of screen addicts.

Exposure to screen technology during key stages of child development may have counter-productive effects on cognitive processes and learning, particularly language development and competency in reading and maths, Dr Sigman said.

“Legally requiring the introduction of screen technology to 20 to 60-month-old children is likely to lead to even higher levels of daily screen viewing. Early introduction to ICT [information and communications technology] is likely to lead to a greater lifetime dependency on screens,” he said.

The Government’s new early years curriculum, known as the EFYS (Early Years Foundation Stage), will become statutory in all nurseries and childcare settings in England from September. It sets out specific computer-related tasks for underfives.

From the age of 22 months children should “show an interest in ICT. Seek to acquire basic skills in turning on and operating some ICT equipment.” From 30 months schools should “draw young children’s attention to pieces of ICT apparatus they see or they use with adult supervision”.

From 40 months children should “Complete a simple program on a computer. Use ICT to perform simple functions such as selecting a channel on the TV remote control. Use a mouse and keyboard to interact with age-appropriate computer software.”

These goals are set against a background of growing use of IT in state schools at all ages. Dr Sigman said that there was increasing evidence to suggest that this approach carried substantial risks. Supposedly educational DVDs and computer programs were very often nothing of the sort, he said.

He cited a recent study in the Journal of Pediatrics, which found that the use of such software produced no positive effects on children under 2 and might retard language development.

He observed the emergence of a “video deficit” phenomenon whereby young children who have no trouble understanding a task demonstrated in real life often stumble when the same task is shown on screen.Exposure to television and computer games over a long period might also have long-term consequences on children’s ability to concentrate.

Richard House, senior lecturer in psychotherapy and counselling at Roehampton University, said that there was no compelling evidence to support the Government’s view that screen-based learning was good for very young children.

“One would think the Government must have had convincing evidence for incorporating computer and screen technology into legislation that is legally binding for all nursery or child care settings, but none exists,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Families and Schools said it was not mandatory for children to achieve all the learning goals. “The EYFS says that most – though not all – children should have the chance to find out about everyday technology through their play,” she said.

What little surfers will have to know

The Government’s computer literacy goals for children aged 22-36 months
— Acquire basic skills in turning on and operating some ICT equipment
— Talk with carer about what it does, what they can do with it and how to use it safely
— Use the photocopier to copy their own pictures and other equipment such as karaoke machines

Children aged 30-50 months
— Know how to operate simple equipment

Children aged 40-60 months
— Complete a simple computer program
— Use ICT to perform simple functions, such as selecting a channel on TV remote control
— Use a mouse and keyboard to interact with age-appropriate computer software
— Find out about and identify the uses of everyday information and communication technology and use it together with programmable toys to support learning. Click on icons to cause things to happen in a computer program

Source: Times Online, UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article3864656.ece

Check-out marketing is genius - strategically placed goodies at the point of purchase, designed to entice the wandering eyes of children. Add parents who are tired, running late or too scared of a public tantrum to say no, and you’ve got yourself a sale.

My three-year-old son recently weaselled his way into a toy mobile phone at the register, but it was tech talent, not pester power, that earned him the score.

With the ease of an expert, he flipped open the phone and began an imaginary phone call to his grandmother, announcing he had a new “mobo” and arranging a time to visit. It was hard not to reward such creativity.

The gadget now joins his already impressive tech collection - a toy laptop, portable DVD player, digital set-top box, walkie-talkie and a Nintendo Wii, which his father argued would be great exercise thanks to its motion-sensing remote.

Granted, our junior geek comes from a tech-savvy family, but he’s not uncommon among his generation. Tots of the 21st century have been wired from the womb, with the rise of interactive tech toys such as LeapFrog’s learning system, computer tuition that now begins at kindergarten and “switched on” parents role-modelling the digital age of computers, mobiles and portable media.

The question is: how good is that early tech exposure for our kids, and are the bytes and buttons holding them back from important development that can’t be gained on a machine?

Private tech educators such as Computer Gym and ComputerTots, which run weekly half-hour computer classes at pre-schools across the country, argue there are educational rewards from the preschool PC program where three and four-year-olds learn how to open a document, surf the net and navigate through software.

ComputerTots director Sheri Borman, a trained psychologist and mother of three, says their computer classes are preparing pre-schoolers for primary education, introducing them to the building blocks of mathematics and reading.”

The menu that they navigate through is a left-to-right progression like reading, and you can give a character like a robot a sequence of instructions, which is an important part of mathematics,” Mrs Borman says.

The former crisis counsellor refers to more than a dozen research studies that demonstrate pre-school children who are exposed to technology in a structured way have better schoolreadiness skills, better verbal skills and better cognitive skills. In one US study, four-year-olds with computer skills had IQs that were on average 12 points higher.

“Most of the time it’s working on a computer, but it could also be using a digital microscope or a video camera.

“It’s about submerging the children in a technological culture because we don’t want children to be intimidated by (software such as) Adobe Photoshop; we want them, even at kindergarten level, not to be fearful of trying technology.”

Computer Gym’s director Chris Bouwmeester says its pre-school computer classes reach 2000 children nationally, but demand has changed very little in the past 15 years.

What has shifted is parental expectation that early childhood education will include computers.

“One of the biggest restrictions facing parents is having appropriate software that remains engaging for children. Parents might have one or two such titles, but it’s hard to cover the range of topics that we do - that’s one of the reasons parents appreciate the service,” Mr Bouwmeester says.

What both kiddie computer groups agree on is that the ultimate benefit of the tech classes for tots lies not in the curriculum but in the personal interaction and social experience.

“Our teachers are with the children and can build on the learning experience they are getting - very different from plonking a child in front of a computer and letting them go for it,” Mr Bouwmeester says. “The lessons are valuable for children because they are in a group - having a great laugh and sharing discoveries and experiences.”

Leading pediatric researcher and author Professor Frank Oberklaid, who is the director of the Centre for Community Child Health at the Royal Children’s Hospital, says before the age of five a child needs one thing above all else to fully develop their brain - people.

“What children need more than anything in those early years is relationships so they can learn to socialise, take turns, deal with frustrations. That’s infinitely more important than anything else,” he says.

What concerns him about the rising interest in tech toys and tuition is the unfounded belief that parents are giving their children a head start in learning.

“Do children of today need to learn computer skills? Yes, of course. It’s the new literacy,” Professor Oberklaid says. “But there’s a real concern about “hothousing” - exposing two, three and four-year-olds to stimulating activities like Baby Einstein and flash cards that help teach your child to read by three. There’s no evidence that ‘hothousing’ makes any long-term difference (to education).”

He says the commercialism of “hothousing” is simply preying on the guilt of middle-class parents who want to give children the best of everything, with technology the latest arena in which to compete.

“I’m concerned about the pressure on parents,” Professor Oberklaid says. “Hugh Mackay calls it the ‘overscheduled’ child. I’ve seen it in my patients. Technology is one more pressure on guilty parents.”

Child psychologist Evelyn Field believes working parents and our culture of “busyness” has created a generation of passive parents, who often turn to “cyberia” for baby-sitting.

“Parents are scrambling towards technology. They’re busy and tired and under pressure and a lot of them don’t have the time or energy. They’re putting children in front of the screen, and you can’t blame them,” she says.

Ms Field says the problem with unsupervised tech time is that young children can miss out on wide-ranging experiences such as creative play, exercise and friendships.

“Life changes all the time. Even if you watch the fish pond or the clouds every day, it’s going to change, but you don’t have the same variety of combinations on a digital screen,” she says. “It’s so important that kids get sensory experience to build the brain in the first three to four years of life.”

Dr Joe Tucci, CEO of the Australian Childhood Foundation, says the latest research shows that excessive tech consumption by children can lead to depression, anxiety and aggression.

“Technology tends to be an isolating experience,” he says. “Some of the problems we’re seeing with aggression and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) in kids can be traced back to socially limiting experiences that technology forces kids to have.”

Child psychiatrist Professor Philip Graham, of London’s Institute of Child Health, also notes an increase in children’s mental health problems over the last quarter of the 20th century - which coincides with the dawn of the computer age and rising consumerism.

He says a recent survey in Britain showed that adults are concerned about the negative impact of materialism on children, incuding devices such as iPods, computers and mobile phones.

“Children have always been acquisitive and always will be, but increasingly they are defined by what they own rather than what they are,” he told Livewire.

Dr Tucci says that while some of these tech toys offer important stimulation, they’re also priming toddlers to be consumers before their time. “Yes, it’s cute and it’s role-playing, but equally it’s also preparing children to be consumers, and that’s the rub.”

All the experts agree that the healthiest way to introduce young kids to technology is with supervision and limits - no more than two hours of technology time a day with a balance of activity both indoors and outdoors, alone and in a group, involving both structured and free play.

Dr Tucci warns that to combat ballooning rates of child obesity, brain games need to be curbed to allow for real life action. “Unlike activities like sport or reading, technology has the potential to swamp children because it is so exciting with all of the colour and movement,” he says.

“We have to ground children in the physical space to learn about their bodies. Otherwise we’ve got a job in front of us to make exercise as exciting and interesting as technology.”

Dubbed the “genius” in her play group, two-year old Annika displays the makings of an IT whizz, having already mastered redial on her mother’s mobile, the CD-ROM and the TV remote.

“If she wants to talk to her Nanny she just presses and holds number 3 on my mobile,” says her mum, Donna Evans.

“Yesterday she rang my mother-in-law. I have to put the mobile phone out of her reach now.”

While Annika’s parents are happy to foster the tech interest, they’re also wary of overexposure. “We make sure she’s not a drone in front of the TV. We also incorporate a lot of the imaginary toys, like the kitchen appliances, so that she’s role playing and not just pressing buttons.”

Ms Evans admits she likes the learning benefits of Annika’s tech talent - as long as it remains enjoyable.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m pushing her learning, but she has the potential to be bright quite young and the tech stuff really gives her an interest in learning. I just don’t want an expectation placed on her to perform.”

The couple are also considering the unstructured education of Montessori, which doesn’t introduce computers until primary level.

“The Montessori perspective is that young children before the age of six need to learn with their hands,” Montessori trainer Amy Kirkham says.

“Computers tend to be more abstract, which is why we don’t use them until primary school.” Young mum Sandra Griffin says her friends always joke that her three-year-old son, Matt, is going to be in IT when he grows up.

He’s already mastered the computer, he has a list of his favourite websites and performs regular virus checks on the PC.

Thanks to the online games he plays he knows his colours, the alphabet, patterns and some basic maths, including counting to 20.

“I honestly believe that computers are a valuable tool in teaching kids,” Ms Griffin explains.

“Not only has it helped with Mattie’s knowledge and brain development but it also helped his fine motor skills and increased his attention span to the point where at just three years of age he can concentrate on one activity for an hour.”

The only downside is what it’s costing the family in gadgets - including a Nintendo DS for the next birthday - and $70 for each game after that.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
http://tinyurl.com/3p7a7s

Sharon Rechter remembers the day four years ago when a friend dropped by for lunch.

“She had one baby, two bottles, three diapers and five baby DVDs,” Rechter, now 32, says. “Not having children then, I wasn’t familiar with baby DVDs, and I asked her what they were. She said with kind of a straight face, `They make my baby smarter.’”

“I said, `How do you know?’ and she said, `Because it says so on the box.’”

Rechter had her doubts. Intrigued, she and her partner, Guy Oranim, investigated the $1.5 billion baby-DVD industry and discovered “it was not supervised by anybody. You and (I) could take my 1-year-old, video her playing with a puppy, put classical music in it and claim it was educational.”

She also learned there was nothing like it on television. Not on the Public Broadcasting System _ “Barney” and “Dora the Explorer” skew to an older demographic _ not on the Cartoon Network, and not in any of the “family blocks” on network television.

Seeing a niche with a ready market of consumers, Rechter and Oranim founded BabyFirstTV, a subscription-based network available via satellite (channel 293) and cable for $4.99 a month. Its programs air 24 hours a day, seven days a week and are targeted to children ages 6 months to 3 years.

Did you just shudder?

Or did you reach for the phone to call DirecTV?

Lots of adults have done both.

Since its launch on Mother’s Day 2006, BabyFirstTV has found its way to 30 countries, making the network available to some 80 million homes. A DVD line of the programming is coming to stores soon.

Of the 500 hours of content on the network now, “80 percent we produce ourselves,” Rechter says.

That programming has features unique to the network that are intended to assure parents that the programming isn’t harmful. For one thing, there are no commercials on the network. For another, all of the “shows” _ really two- to-seven-minute segments _ are signed off on by chief educational adviser Arthur Prober, a doctor of educational psychology; and a self-regulatory review board including pediatricians, authors of parenting books and others.

“If they don’t like it, we don’t show it,” she says. “Believe me, we’ve spent a lot of money on things that haven’t aired.”

POSITIVE EFFECTS QUESTIONED

Still, the general idea of parking babies in car seats on the floor in front of a television troubles childhood-development professionals. The American Academy of Pediatrics says simply, “Don’t do it!” (exclamation theirs).

“Any positive effect of television on infants and toddlers is still open to question, but the benefits of parent-child interactions are proven. Under age two, talking, singing, reading, listening to music or playing are far more important to a child’s development than any TV show.”

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood added BabyFirstTV to a suit filed with the Federal Trade Commission a month after the network launched, complaining that it _ as well as the Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby line of DVDs _ were falsely advertising educational benefits without evidence.

In December, the FTC found in favor of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, and this year, Walt Disney Video, which produced Brainy Baby and Baby Einstein, stopped advertising the programs as educational. The FTC’s findings would apply to BabyFirstTV and “any marketer of products claimed to provide educational or developmental benefits to children under 2.”

BabyFirstTV still labels itself as “a brand-new educational tool.” They have reports that 3-month-olds are tuning in, but they stick by their 6-month start age because “that’s the age where a child can really follow from an eye-development perspective, and it’s the recommendation of our pediatricians.”

To fulfill their commitment to parents that the programming will be beneficial and interactive, says Rechter, programming on BabyFirstTV “comes with parenting subtitles so they don’t interfere with the child’s viewing but help mom interact. For example, if you see a red ball bouncing on the screen, it would say to you as a dad, `Ask what color is the ball?’.”

The network’s on-air logo is color-coded to represent “which educational aspect is being taught,” she says. “So when you are watching on the screen, the flower will be only one color, let’s say blue, and that means to mom we are now teaching numbers. Again, that’s to promote interaction between mom and the baby.”

PROGRAMMING FOR DIFFERENT AGES

Because children of various stages of development will be tuning in, the programming is developed so it is interesting to different age groups within the demographic, she says. “Say we have a sand painting segment, so you see the hand painting in the sand and you hear classical music; if you’re a 3-month-old, we’re training your eye movement and showing you contrast of colors and movement and music; to a 1-year-old, we’re drawing a horse and giving you another way to learn the word `horse’; to a 3-year-old, it’s a guessing game.”

At night, when all good babies should be sleeping through until morning, BabyFirstTV goes into a drowsy mode: It’s all kaleidoscopic images, videos of dangling mobiles and fish swimming in a tank, accompanied by soothing classical music.

“In February we had a technical issue with DirecTV and they got hundreds of calls at 2 in the morning asking, `Where is BabyFirst?’ That just shows people are watching.”

Source: RedOrbit, TX
http://tinyurl.com/47tf8y

Pediatricians and child development experts have repeatedly warned parents that putting a television set in a young child’s bedroom is associated with a host of undesirable outcomes, including poorer school performance, behavior problems and obesity. But what about teenagers? Epidemiologists at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health wondered whether the undesirable outcomes of bedroom television might be blunted at this age.

Apparently not, according to a federally funded study of 781 adolescents between 15 and 18 published in the April issue of Pediatrics.

Daheia J. Barr-Anderson and her colleagues found that the two-thirds of youths who had a bedroom set watched more TV, moved less and had poorer diets and lower grades than those without one.

Parents who are considering whether to put a television in a teenager’s room should refrain from doing so, the authors recommend.

Source: Washington Post, United States
http://tinyurl.com/4gltwq

Computer games and fast food have been blamed by doctors for a startling rise in the number of children being treated in hospital for sleep disorders.

Eating too much sugary food is also blamed for preventing children from dropping off to sleep.

Newly released NHS figures show that the number of under-11s referred to hospital specialists for insomnia, sleep-walking and sleep-related breathing problems has rocketed by 26 per cent over the past five years.

But the true numbers affected could be much higher because the figures reflect only those seeking medical help.

Studies have linked poor sleep to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). And lack of sleep harms children’s ability to learn at school.

Psychologist Chireal Shallow, of the Naturally Nurturing clinic for children’s sleep disorders in London, said: “There are likely to be thousands more children whose parents do not seek treatment.

“A lot of the problem is guilty parenting where kids are allowed the rule of the roost because Mum and Dad come home from work late.

“The light, sound and movement of television or computer screens is stimulating and keeps children awake and there should be at least an hour’s gap before going to bed.”

Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “It’s absolutely crazy for parents to let their children go to bed any time they like.

“Parents need to exert more authority and remove computer games from bedrooms to make sure kids have the best start in life. I’m sure teachers would be delighted.”

The NHS statistics show nearly 3,000 children under 11 had their sleep monitored overnight by specialists during 2006 compared with only 2,200 in 2002.

Of those, 1,733 were boys.

Professor Jim Horne of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University, said that children aged five to eight are particularly vulnerable to sleep problems as a result of ‘electronic distractions’ because having a rigid bedtime routine is so important to them.

“If they sleep better, the ADHD symptoms disappear.”

Jane Howell, 34, from Morden, South West London, struggled for years to get her son Marcel, now 13, to sleep.

After spending most of the day at school in front of a computer, Marcel would spend the evenings watching television but then found it hard to drop off, often not falling asleep until just a few hours before he had to be up again. “Eventually the problem got so bad that Jane approached a sleep clinic. “She said: “The clinic asked me about his routines and said computers, televisions and mobile phones were a distraction.

“They told me to minimise the time he uses computers and after 8pm it’s now wind-down time.

“He now has much more energy and is sleeping better. As parents you have to be hard on your kids. They want to do their own thing but you have to be strict.”

Dr Rob Primhak, a consultant paediatric respiratory physician at Sheffield Children’s Hospital, said there was now a shortage of specialists due to the numbers coming in.

“There has been a huge surge in demand,” he said.

Mandy Gurney, of the Millpond Children’s Sleep Clinic in London, said: “Not getting a good night’s sleep can have the same effect as four units of alcohol, so imagine what it is like for a child.”

Source: Daily Mail, UK
http://tinyurl.com/4ktvhr

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. And when babies sleep less, they may gain too much weight. A new Harvard study finds that babies and toddlers who sleep fewer than 12 hours daily are at greater risk for being overweight in preschool, startling evidence that the link between sleep and obesity may affect even very young children.

“The two (behaviors) are acting independently. In combination, they are particularly risky,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Elsie Taveras of Harvard Medical School.

The findings, published in April’s Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, are based on mothers’ reports of their babies’ sleep habits and TV viewing, and direct measures of the children’s height, weight and skinfold thickness.

Starting when the babies were 6 months old, mothers were asked how long their children napped during the day and how long they slept at night. Moms were asked again when the children were 1 and 2 years old. They were asked about TV time when the children reached age 2.

The researchers combined the sleep answers to find an average pattern for each child during the first two years of life. They found 586 of the children slept an average of 12 or more hours a day and 329 of the children slept less than that.

Among the long sleepers, 7 percent were obese at age 3.

The short sleepers fared worse. Twelve percent of them became obese 3-year-olds. Adding TV to the picture, 17 percent of those who slept less than 12 hours a day and watched two or more hours of television a day were obese by the time they were 3.

Obesity was defined as having a body mass index in the 95th percentile or above. BMI is a measure that combines height and weight. A 3-year-old who is 3 feet, 3 inches tall and 40 pounds would be considered obese.

The researchers took into account other risk factors for obesity, including TV viewing, and still found the children who slept fewer than 12 hours a day had a doubled risk of being obese at age 3 than the other children.

Sleep’s impact on appetite hormones may explain the effect, Taveras said. In prior studies, sleep-deprived adults produced more ghrelin, a hormone that promotes hunger, and less leptin, a hormone that signals fullness.

TV viewing is thought to increase the risk of obesity both because it takes time away from calorie-burning play and because of food ads for snacks and fast food.

The families in the new study lived in Massachusetts and had relatively high incomes and education levels, making it difficult to apply the findings to everyone, Taveras acknowledged. Sleep researchers who read the study said it adds to growing evidence of the link between poor sleep and obesity. A study published last year found that every additional hour per night a third-grader spends sleeping reduces the child’s chances of being obese in sixth grade by 40 percent.

“The main message for parents is that there has to be regularity in sleep in children. It’s very important to maintain a schedule,” said Dr. Michelle Cao of Stanford University’s sleep disorders clinic. She wasn’t involved in the study but co-wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal.

Taveras recommended practices that teach infants to fall asleep on their own, putting them to bed when they’re drowsy but not fully asleep.

Pat Prinz of the University of Washington, who wasn’t involved in the study, said parents who rely on day care should make sure their toddlers have plenty of time to run, jump and play.

“The more active they are in the day, the better they’ll sleep at night,” Prinz said. But she cautioned that genetics may play a role in sleep and a person’s genetic makeup may limit how much sleep duration can be improved.

Source: The Associated Press
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hU7C7YWiJZnZmED5gI2CUbejRYvwD8VT7VV80

If you’d like to know what to do to help your kids grow up healthy, try this: Take the television from your child’s room, throw it in the backyard, and tell the kid to run rings around it. That’s the message in the latest news showing that inactivity impairs children’s health and well-being and may be setting them up for heart disease and diabetes in adulthood.

Many children, even tiny tots, have TVs in their bedrooms, a fact that has dismayed pediatricians, who presume that less TV is always better. But there’s been little evidence that those TVs are really doing harm, aside from two studies showing that children with bedroom TVs tend to be fatter than their TV-less peers.

Now, researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health have kindly provided the ammo that parents need to say a big fat “no” to the personal entertainment center. They looked at a group of 781 teenagers ages 15 to 18 and found that the 62 percent with a bedroom TV were less likely to exercise or to eat fruit and vegetables and got lower grades. Maybe that’s because—no surprise here—so many of them watched more than five hours of television a day. (I’d like to know how high schoolers have five-plus hours a day to watch TV, once they’ve dealt with school, homework, and IM-ing. Maybe they need more chores.)

The picture is particularly troubling for girls, who typically become much less physically active than boys as teenagers. Their moderate and vigorous physical activity dropped by an hour a week if they had a bedroom TV; the boys’ activity level didn’t change. (On the other hand, only TV-owning boys saw a significant difference in grade-point average, 2.9 compared to 2.6—possibly because they already spend less time than girls doing homework.)

“Parents should move forth and get rid of that TV,” says Daheia Barr-Anderson, a postdoctoral fellow and physical activity epidemiologist at Minnesota who led the study, published in April’s Pediatrics. She is sympathetic to the fact that parents might not mind having teens holed up in their rooms, rather than rolling their eyes in the living room while Mom watches Grey’s Anatomy. But, she says, “it probably is the best for the health of your children.”

Further ammunition comes from the University of North Carolina, where researchers have found that less active children are more likely to develop metabolic syndrome as teens. This cluster of symptoms, which includes high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, and diabetes, vastly increases the risk of heart disease. The researchers charted the health and physical activity of 389 children when they were 7 to 10 years old and then again when they were 14 to 17. Almost 5 percent of the children had at least three symptoms of metabolic syndrome as teenagers. The children who were less active and less aerobically fit in grade school were five to 6 times more likely to develop metabolic syndrome. The children at the highest risk were overweight to begin with and got no vigorous exercise—things like playing soccer, swimming, or running intensely enough to get breathless.

It’s shocking, and sad, that teenagers in the bloom of youth increasingly have health problems that used to be associated with the infirmities of old age. The good news, if there is any, is that we already know the remedy. Alas, it’s exactly the kind of exercise that the schools have chucked, with PE wiped out in favor of more academic sessions and recess a mere blip. Yes, children will ace those standardized tests. They can then go on to shorter, sicker lives, all because we didn’t encourage them to run when they were young.

Source: U.S. News & World Report, DC
http://tinyurl.com/49ca2r