Sleeping Arrangements for Young Children

Introduction

Sleeping in children is an important aspect that ensures that they grow healthily. Children should sleep for longer hours than adults since they require more time to relax. Children cannot afford to stay away for many hours. Sleeping patterns and methods in children differ based on issues such as cultural and geographical reasons. A child can sleep alone in a bed, or in the same bed with a parent or a guardian. The most appropriate way a child can sleep is by co-sleeping, whereby the child shares a bed with another person on the same bed. The paper evaluates the issue of co-sleeping by babies and compares child sleeping arrangements in the UAE and other countries.

Co-sleeping

Co-sleeping is a practice in which a child shares a bed with an adult usually a mother. It’s a norm that has been practiced for many years and continues to be practiced today. Many parents hold that co-sleeping aids the baby to feel secure and comfortable. The bodily contact developed leads to a strong bond that exists even when the baby grows older. (El‐Sh & Sadeh, 2015) Parents feel that sleeping next to their babies is safer and highly reduces the risk of suffocation by pillows or bedding that accidentally block their airways. There exists a school of thought that babies sleeping in the same bed as their parents breastfeed more. Therefore, the faster development of babies is guaranteed. Babies sleeping in the same bed with their mums are believed to have more sleeping time during the night.

Co-sleeping is revered by many parents because it helps to save on time the mother could spend pick a child in a nursery for breastfeeding (Tyler & Schmitz, 2018). Although co-sleeping is viewed as the ideal form of sleeping arrangement, some challenges come with it. Co-sleeping may lead to baby suffocating by either the parent or bedding blocking their airways, once the baby is trained to fall asleep next to the parent he may find it hard to sleep when taken care of by someone else. Co-sleeping is pampering and doesn't allow the baby to learn how to self-settle.

Sleeping Arrangement in UAE

In the UAE, childcare is more complicated. Maternity laws provide that mothers are supposed to return to work within six weeks after giving birth. Their children are forced to join the school system much earlier compared to other countries. Regularly, family support systems such as the extended family aren’t available to ex-pat parents, and therefore having a nanny at home is an affordable option. The hiring of nannies depends on the parent’s workload and needs. One can either hire a nanny who takes care of the baby for a few hours per day or get a live-in nanny instead (Kowash et al., 2017). Nannies sleep next to the children and keep a close watch on them and assume some parenting roles. Parents prefer having their nannies in place before or soon thereafter a baby arrives and so they are in a position to provide for the baby’s needs.

At times parents are forced to take their children to Kindergarten. UAE offers various options to parents who would like to have their kids in kindergartens. Each child care center has its own formulated rules, and parents are at liberty to decide on the daycare. Most of the care centers do not accept kids below 18 months. Children in these facilities sleep together in a co-sleeping arrangement. In the United Arab Emirates, climatic conditions throw up an exceptional set of parenting challenges specifically when it comes to getting a baby to sleep in 50-plus degrees. Within UAE, 22-24 degrees Celsius is the desired room temperature for baby sleep, which is slightly higher than the international recommendation of 16-20 degrees. The handling of children below 24 months in UAE has been stressed. The Government continues to ensure that all care centers adhere to all those rules in order to ensure that UAE continues to fight mortality rates.

Sleeping Arrangements in Japan

Japan is believed to stress on collectiveness, interdependence, and unity in all its undertakings as a state. Japan has more women in workplace than any other country, which is largely attributable to a decline to the mother-infant co-sleeping compared to the earlier Japanese sleeping arrangements of the 1960s and 1980s. The country champions having children sleep in their own beds and where possible in separate room (Kohyama et al., 2011). However, due to rather limited spaces, it becomes extremely difficult for children to sleep alone. This has inevitably made co-sleeping a habitual practice in the modern Japan (Iwata et al., 2013). Another main reason why mothers in Japan prefer co-sleeping in spite of having discordant independence-oriented cultural values may be due to the societal expectation that remains in modern Japan. This has progressively been achieved through ethno theories that provide for infant independence and other values found in an urban, relatively rich, and highly educated person.

Sleeping Arrangements in China

China continues to practice co-sleeping for the babies until they reach a certain age. They have adopted a different culture where babies have different nighttime feeding routines. There is some regularity of bed-sharing in Chinese school-aged children although this decreases significantly with age (Liu et al2016). Overcrowding and poor physical health of babies has led to increased likelihood for children and parents to share beds. Chinese hold that sharing beds may exert influences on sleep quality rather than sleep quantity. Chinese are mostly conservative; behavior changes take long to occur.

Recommendations

In view of the above, I recommend that co-sleeping should continue to be practiced, and parents considering hiring nannies should be careful to ensure that their children are handled with care. I further recommend that daycare should maintain high standards of sanitation and should be well equipped with all children necessaries that ensure proper health development of the baby’s. Parents who wish to have separate sleeping rooms of their children should exercise great care to prevent babies from suffocating. Feeding of babies at night on regular basis should also be appreciated.

Conclusion

Based on the discussed facts, sleeping arrangements in young children is an important aspect of child development. Parents and guardians should be keen to observe their children all the time for their safety. Special attention should be paid to avoid early child mortality. With all these key aspects observed, children are guaranteed of healthy living.