ALLIED Health practitioner and sleep advocate Sharon Moore says families who are dealing with lack of sleep in their young children don’t have to just accept their “sleep-wrecked” situation.
“Forty per cent of children aged between 4 and 10 have sleep problems but a lot of them are solvable and treatable,” she said.
With four decades of experience in allied health, Sharon works with referred patients to help them deal with their issues around breathing (day and night), eating and speaking.
She is the author of “Sleep-Wrecked Kids”, an international speaker, sleep-health advocate and speech pathologist at Well Spoken Upper Airway & Communication Solutions.
She will host an online short course on January 22 designed for parents and caregivers who want to improve or optimise their children’s sleep.
With a particular focus on children aged between 3 and 5, Sharon said this was a critical time in a child’s development and lack of good-quality sleep could have wide-reaching impacts on all areas of the child’s life, especially in the lead up to starting school.
She was motivated to run the course to help parents identify problems, provide practical tips on how to make changes and understand when to seek expert advice for their children’s sleep issues.
“It will be loaded with tips for parents, full of quizzes, questions and quirky activities,” she said.
“I have seen first-hand the impact that deficient sleep has on kids’ health, happiness and school readiness.
“Parents deserve to have this information at their fingertips and there is a lot that they can do at home.”
“When I meet parents, they are amazed when they have the ‘lightbulb’ moment and things can change pretty fast for them.”
Sharon said some parents and families could become used to poor quality sleep and accept it as “normal” to feel wrecked in the daytime, living in a sleep daze.
Poorly slept children are typically ‘wired or tired’, moody or defiant, constantly ‘on the go’ in order to stay awake during the day.
“Nothing good comes out of bad sleep. It affects children’s emotional regulation, reasoning and problem solving, ability to think, learn and remember and there are knock on effects to growth and immunity” she said.
“I am convinced of the need to treat these issues early and not to wait.”
Sharon Moore will hold an interactive, short online course for parents and carers on sleep issues in children, 10am-1pm on Saturday, January 22.
To book tickets click here for January 22.
For more information for parents, connect with “thekidssleeppuzzle” on social media.
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