Health guru reveals exact age a child should stop sharing a bed with parents… and the answer may surprise YOU
A health guru has revealed exactly what age a child should stop sleeping with their parents.
Mickey Mehta, a wellness coach from India, was featured in a video on Instagram discussing the benefits of co-sleeping.
This practice is controversial among healthcare professionals who have warned against it for safety reasons, but some parents swear by it and say it brings them closer to their children.
However, Mehta suggested that it is essential, and he denounced the Western practice of placing a child in his own bedroom at the age of two or three.
He even put an exact number on the age at which it is okay to quit: seven years.
Wellness businessman Mickey Mehta said in an interview that mirror neurons are unconsciously active during sleep and absorb what is happening around the child. But there is no evidence for this idea
Mehta’s advice contained a mix of neuroscience, pseudoscience and mysticism.
“Until what age should the child sleep with the mother and father, if at all,” entrepreneur and health influencer Ritesh Bawri asked Mehta in the interview video.
“Their mirror neurons work until seven o’clock and they are very sensitive,” Mehta replied.
“They will learn everything subconsciously when the child is sleeping,” he added.
Mirror neurons in the brain are activated when we see people performing actions, but also when we perform those actions.
Mirror neurons, one of the most important neuroscientific discoveries of the past decade, are crucial to the way we learn skills and interact with people.
Even though it is well understood that sleep is when we process and consolidate memoriesthere is no evidence that mirror neurons learn unconsciously during sleep, as Mehta claimed.
Mehta further explained that a child’s subconscious mind is steeped in negativity during sleep, and sleeping with a parent can help protect against this.
Mehta suggested that this is essential, and he denounced the Western practice of placing a child in his own bedroom at the age of two or three. He even put an exact number on the age at which it is okay to quit: seven years
‘(A child) gets dreams of fear, phobias because (the child’s) subconscious is sensitive, it picks up every signal. Everything happens universally,” he explained.
‘And during the astral journey the children cry. They shit, they piss.”
It is believed that astral travel is not a science, and it is unclear what Mehta meant by his statement.
“Mmm,” Bawri replied.
“And there is no rest, recovery and repair,” Mehta continued.
“Wow, I’ve never heard so much bs in one role from a guy,” said Dr. Mona Amin, a pediatrician who posts on Instagram under the name @pedsdoctalk.
“He’s insinuating that children are bedwetted because of trauma, fear and separation, which is not the case,” she continued, when another commenter asked her to explain more.
‘Bedwetting is common in many children due to the immaturity of the bladder and not due to fear.
There is some evidence that co-sleeping does indeed synchronize the heartbeats of two people. But contrary to Mickey Mehta’s suggestion, this is not necessary for a child’s healthy development
‘And children don’t have to sleep next to their mother for seven years to feel connected. Independent sleeping is possible and developmentally typical and can even mean better sleep for the child AND the parent.’
Baby sleep consultant Amrita Saraf, on the other hand, agreed with Mehta’s views on co-sleeping.
“You see co-sleeping is always healthier (and) better (and I don’t shame anyone who doesn’t co-sleep with their kids (because) we all do what works for us,” she wrote. (I’m) just saying what Mickey Sir says is true.’
Intuitively and scientifically speaking, if a child has disrupted sleep, he or she will not have a good night’s sleep. This can lead to all kinds of developmental and behavioral problems. But there is no scientific evidence linking childhood sleep disturbances to astral travel.
He also claimed that when the child is close to its mother’s heartbeat, it will synchronize its rhythms.
Mehta is neither a doctor nor a scientist. He is a life coach, health and wellness businessman and owner of a series of gyms.
Some of his ideas have some scientific support, such as the idea that co-sleeping synchronizes the heart rate.
“When the mother is next to the child and the child cries, the mother calms down,” he told Bawri, who replied, “Right.”
This idea is logical enough: if a child has a bad dream, a parent nearby can calm the child. But then he said, “Ears to heart, and the child’s erratic heartbeat returns to rhythm.”
A 2019 study indeed showed that people who slept together had their heart rhythms synchronized for longer periods.
But there is no evidence that this is necessary for the development of young children, nor that children naturally have irregular heartbeats that need to be corrected.
For children who do have cardiac arrhythmias — irregular heartbeats that could be signs of a medical condition — doctors don’t recommend simply listening to a parent’s heartbeat to correct it.
They have many more treatments in their toolbox.
So whether you decide to co-sleep with your child, it’s probably a good idea to seek out other experts besides Mickey Mehta.