A health guru has revealed the exact age a child should stop sleeping with their parents.
Mickey Mehta, a wellness coach from India, was featured in a video on Instagram, where he discussed 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, saying it brings them closer to their kids.
However, Mehta suggested it is essential, and he decried the western practice of putting a child in their own bedroom by age two or three.
He even put an exact number on the age when it’s okay to stop: seven years old.
Wellness businessman Mickey Mehta said in an interview that mirror neurons are subconsciously active during sleep, absorbing what happens around the child. But there isn’t evidence for this idea
Mehta’s advice contained a mix of neuroscience, pseudoscience, and mysticism.
‘Up til what age should the child then sleep with the mom and dad, if at all,’ entrepreneur and health influencer Ritesh Bawri asked Mehta in the interview video.
‘Til seven, their mirror neurons are working and they are very sensitive,’ Mehta replied.
‘They will learn everything subconsciously, when the child is asleep’ he added.
Mirror neurons in the brain activate when we see people perform actions – but also when we perform those actions.
One of the most important neuroscience discoveries of the past decade, mirror neurons are crucial for how we learn skills and learn how to interact with people.
Even though it is well understood that sleep is when we process and consolidate memories, there is not evidence that the mirror neurons are learning subconsciously during sleep, as Mehta claimed.
Mehta went on to explain that a child’s subconscious mind is soaking in negativity while they sleep, and that sleeping with a parent will help protect against this.
Mehta suggested it is essential, and he decried the western practice of putting a child in their own bedroom by age two or three. He even put an exact number on the age when it’s okay to stop: seven years old
‘[A child] gets dreams of fear, phobias because [the child’s] subconscious is tender, it picks up every signal. Everything happening universally,’ he explained.
‘And in the astral travel, the children cry. They sh*t, they piss.’
Astral travel is not believed to be science, and it’s unclear what Mehta meant by his statement.
‘Mmm,’ Bawri replied.
‘And there is no rest, recovery, and repair,’ Mehta went on.
‘Wow I’ve never heard so much bs in one reel from a dude,’ commented Dr. Mona Amin, a pediatrician who posts on Instagram under the handle @pedsdoctalk.
‘He’s insinuating that children bed wet because of trauma and fear and separation which is not the case,’ she continued, when another commenter asked her to elaborate.
‘Bed wetting is common in many children due to bladder immaturity and not anxiety.
Evidence suggests that co-sleeping does indeed synchronize two people’s heartbeats. But contrary to Mickey Mehta’s suggestion, this is not necessary for a child’s healthy development
‘And children do not need to sleep next to their mother for seven years to feel bonded. Independent sleep is possible and developmentally typical and can actually mean better sleep for the child AND parent.’
Baby sleep consultant Amrita Saraf, on the other hand, agreed with Mehta’s take on co-sleeping.
‘See co sleeping is always healthier [and] better [and I’m] not shaming 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 is saying is true.’
Intuitively and scientifically, if a child has disrupted sleep, they will not have restful sleep. This can lead to all sorts of developmental and behavioral problems. But no scientific evidence has linked childhood sleep disruptions to astral travel.
He also claimed that when the child is close to their mother’s heartbeat, it will synchronize their rhythms.
Mehta is not a doctor, nor is he a scientist. He is a life coach, a health and wellness businessman, and owner of a series of gyms.
Some of his ideas have some scientific support – like the idea that co-sleeping synchronizes heartbeats.
‘If the mother is next to the child, as the child cries, the mother soothes,’ he told Bawri, who replied ‘Right.’
This notion is logical enough: If a child has a bad dream, a nearby parent can soothe them. But then he said, ‘Ears on the heart, and the erratic heartbeat of the child comes back to rhythm again.’
A 2019 study did indeed show that people who slept together had synced up heart rhythms for extended periods.
But there’s no evidence that this is necessary for early childhood development, nor that children naturally have erratic heartbeats that need correcting.
For children who do have arrhythmias – erratic heartbeats that can be signs of medical conditions – doctors do not recommend simply listening to a parent’s heartbeat to correct it.
They have many other treatments in their toolbox.
So whether you decide to co-sleep with your child, it is probably a good idea to seek out other experts beyond Mickey Mehta.
This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk
