Recently, Ms. Wang often bragged to her friends, “My son is only two years old, but he is already snoring in his sleep, just like an adult, so it’s fun!” In fact, Ms. Wang’s child’s snoring is not only not worth bragging about, but should also be checked out at the hospital as soon as possible. Because in China, about 5% of children have breathing disorders during sleep, the most obvious symptom is snoring. Sleep breathing disorder will not only affect the growth and development of children, but also make the child’s learning ability decline, temperament change, and in serious cases can even cause the child to die suddenly in their sleep. Adenoid hypertrophy and tonsillar hypertrophy are the main causes of sleep snoring in children The most common cause of sleep breathing disorder in children is an enlarged tonsil or adenoid (located at the junction of the nasopharynx and oropharynx), which blocks the airway and causes respiratory arrest during sleep, the most typical manifestation of which is snoring. The disease can occur at any age, with a peak incidence between the ages of 3 and 5. There are many causes of tonsillar or adenoid hypertrophy, some are congenital, some are immune hyperplastic hypertrophy, while some have hyperplastic hypertrophy of the tonsils due to inflammation. The incidence of sleep disorders in children reaches 5% “Children’s sleep breathing disorder is now a multi-morbidity and common disease, yet what makes us feel worried is that many parents have not yet paid attention to the phenomenon of children snoring.” According to the introduction, in 2002, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and other 16 regions of the country jointly carried out an epidemiological survey of “children’s sleep breathing disorder”. In the surveyed more than 60,000 children aged 2 to 12 years, the incidence of sleep breathing disorder reached 27%. Sleep breathing disorder can cause chronic lack of oxygen to the child’s brain, which has a profound impact on the child’s growth and development. Researchers at the Hannover Medical School in Germany found that children’s snoring can directly affect their performance in school. They selected 1,144 school children aged 8 to 10 years old and found that the number of children who snored regularly scored lower in subjects such as arithmetic, spelling and nature was three to four times more than those who never snored. The reason is that snoring seriously affects children’s sleep, which makes them feel tired when they wake up and have difficulty concentrating in class. And researchers at the University of Louisville have found that snoring is one of the many factors that affect children’s behavior and psychology. Children who snore frequently have more problems with verbal expression and social communication than the average child and are more likely to be impulsive, impatient, anxious and frustrated. Their study concluded that snoring can prevent normal breathing and lead to varying degrees of oxygen deprivation. Not only that, but the researchers found that these children who developed problems were treated and relieved of their sleep breathing disorder, and their academic performance and sociability improved significantly. ”So, child snoring is definitely not a ‘fun’ thing and parents must be on high alert.” For children’s sleep breathing disorder, the correct treatment is to take the child to a regular hospital’s ENT department for an early checkup if parents notice snoring, breath-holding, excessive nocturnal urination, night sweats, and also obvious poor learning ability and emotional disturbance. The doctor will first perform sleep monitoring on the child, and if the child’s sleep breathing disorder index is greater than 1 and the blood oxygen saturation is less than 90%, then the child can be diagnosed with sleep breathing disorder. If the most common cause of sleep disordered breathing is enlarged tonsils or adenoids, then a simple surgery to remove them can be the cure. In addition, if the cause of your child’s sleep breathing disorder is something else such as sinusitis, pharyngeal stenosis or a small jaw, then a combination of treatments will be needed.