Never ignore it.
But don’t panic. The solution may be easier than you think.
My 7-year-old daughter snores occasionally. When it happens, I notice she sleeps on her side and she is curled up in a ball, and her chin is very low. When I gently lift her head away from chest, snoring disappears.
Snoring, however, is way more complex than that, and there can be many different causes. Sleeping position is the most innocent one and easiest to solve.
I’ve also observed that she sometimes breathes through her mouth. This happens when she has a runny nose or is simply excited, and it quickly becomes a habit she carries into sleep. Mouth breathing during sleep can very easily turn into snoring. When her nose isn’t congested, I gently close her mouth for a second, which helps restore the healthy habit of nose breathing.
So the first two steps are:
- Fix the child’s sleeping position
- Encourage nose breathing (during day so it becomes a habit)
Help your family to breathe easier
What else you can do for your child and for yourself too, to help breathe easier, is to open a window and bring some fresh air into the sleeping room. If the air quality is doubtful, use air purifier and then humidifier.
Face, skull and jaw development
If the child makes a snore here and there, or there is a period of a few weeks of mild snoring and then it stops, it might be because the child’s skull and jaw is constantly developing, growing, it is different every month. What supports a correct development of your child is a correct oral posture. It has to go together with a habit of nose breathing. It’s all about where the tongue is resting when it’s not used. In short, it should stick to the palate, in a relaxed way. Having it at the bottom of oral cavity is not the correct way. The best what you can do here, instead of teaching child yourself (or from the blog posts and yotube videos) is to contact ENT specialist or orthodontist to teach your child a correct oral posture. And I highly recommend to correct it also for yourself if it is not habit.
Interesting fact: some of the habits, children take over from their parents. Even mouth breathing, or the oral posture can be subconsoiusly inherited. So, what I try to do, I start from myself, and my daughter follow. And then reminding is not neccessary anymore.
Educating yourself on the subject is always good thing to do.
I recommend the following book “Jaws: the story of a hidden epidemic” where you will learn about skull and jaw development, how it is connected to mouth breathing and what are the consequences of some of bad habits.
Sleep apnea in kids
Sleep apnea is not reserved for overweight 50+ adults. Everyone can have sleep apnea regardless of age or weight. Unfortunately, children is a neglected segment of sleep apnea patients. There is no dedicated solutions for them, neither diagnostic nor treatments. This disease is very serious, it has detrimental consequences to health. In kids, it disrupts their development and leads to a wide range of diseases. Snoring is one of the signs that someone may have sleep apnea, it should never be ignored.
The list of symptoms is long. They might be different than in adults, but usual symptoms are mouth breathing, snoring, gasping, choking and stopping breathing during sleap, often headaches, fatigue, irritability. If that sounds familiar, even partly, just go to the doctor asap. It might be also just because of some emotions or periodical stress, but better make sure it’s not sleep apnea.
