Toddlers will be needing less and less sleep throughout the day.  Say goodbye to short naps for you as well.  However, they’re likely to require up to 11 hours of respite at night - a normal sleep schedule at last.

If your child refuses to go to bed unless you’re in the room with him, work on changing it now rather than later.  It can become a habit that will prove difficult to discard at a later age.

One of the best lessons you can teach your 1 to 2 year old will be the skill of soothing themselves to sleep. Use a nightly bedtime ritual to get them used to a regular routine that leads to peaceful slumber.  Giving them a warm bath, reading a few pages of a story, a glass of milk and tucking them in is a good 30 minute routine your child can both get used to and enjoy.

Always tell your toddler that if they stay in bed, you’ll return five minutes later to check. Assure their safety and let them know you’re nearby.

Toddlers are great negotiators, and they’re no different when it comes to bedtime. Because they so enjoy the time they spend with you, they’ll do what they can to prolong your time together. If you suspect he’s stalling, don’t let him. Tell him it’s time for bed and that you can both finish building the model boat or find the stuffed microbe the following morning.  Make the nighttime routine more “business like” when you kiss your baby and tuck them in.  Get up and close the door behind you but do wait a few minutes before retiring yourself.

Enjoy some of the best days of you and your baby’s life.

A sleep center is an organization designed to provide help in detection and treatment of any sleep disorder that may trouble patients. They can come in various forms such as:

* hospital based
* university based
* privately owned or “freestanding”

If you are interested in finding a sleep center, look no further than Sleepcenters.org, a nicely done searchable database of sleep centers accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

You can also use the directory listing of sleep specialists from long-running medical information site, webMD.

Snoring is frequently caused by a blockage of the airways towards the back of the mouth and upper throat. This obstruction causes increased air turbulence when breathing, which in turn compels the soft tissues in your throat to vibrate. The end result is a noisy, disruptive sound enough to give whoever’s sleeping in the next room a restless night.

While snoring is frequently caused by this narrowing of the airways from the soft palate, tongue, and throat relaxing, it can also be brought forward by allergies or sinus problems as well as being overweight and the unfortunate genetic gift of having extra soft tissue around your upper airways.

The larger the tissues in your soft palate, the more likely you are to snore while sleeping. Alcohol or sedatives taken shortly before sleep also promote snoring. These drugs cause greater relaxation of the tissues in your throat and mouth. Surveys reveal that about one-half of all adults snore, and 50 percent of these adults do so loudly and frequently. African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics are more likely to snore loudly and frequently compared to Caucasians, and snoring problems increase with age.