The Sleeping Child Dilemma

Since I seem to have a theme of sleeping children going this week, I thought that I would visit a topic that is near and dear to my heart. It is a phenomenon that always rears its head when I take all four children into the vehicle and traverse away from the homestead. It is the sleeping child in a car syndrome. It usually strikes the two oldest as we approach the last 200 feet to the garage. I go against all medical advice and threaten to leave them in the car. This usually cures them quickly. However, this syndrome can be very tricky to treat in younger children. All studies show that it is not usually worth treating in a vehicle. Tempting as it may be to not move the victims (especially on a Sunday afternoon), it is considered inhumane in some cultures and does nothing to ease the mother's sympathy pains (ie. her need to also take a nap). So you move the sleeping child away from the vehicle and one of two things may happen. Most likely the child will awake. Efforts to induce sleep again are almost always fruitless. There may have been a few rare cases where the sleeping state had been restored, but I have not been able to document one yet. All hopes for napping are dashed and you deal with reality. End of that story. Now, in the case where the child appears to remain comatose upon removal from the vehicle further evaluation by a trained professional is needed. A flow chart would be nice, but I have yet to come across one in the home medical books. Here is how I try to assess the situation. Is the child still strapped in a carseat? If so, do not move...unless the chance of them waking due to heat stroke (because of their bulky outerwear) outweighs the chance of them waking due to removal, or you plain just do not want them to be sleeping anymore. If the child is not strapped in a carseat then you need to check if the child is wearing protective outer garments for the elements (see photo above for example of this). If so, once again you need to assess the likelihood for heat stroke (quickly, of course). Heat stroke really isn't a worry for me as a mother in the land of eternal snow and ice (at least not for 10 months out of my year). As you can see in the photo above, this is usually where the questions end for me. The inexperienced eye might have tried to remove the outer garments, but nothing good usually comes of that. The above documented case of the syndrome was just one of many that I have dealt with, however, it had an interesting twist to it. A patient history should have been obtained, because come to find out later the patient had been visiting Grandma who had given her some chewing gum (which can faintly be seen in the photo). Luckily, the patient did not react adversely to this chewing gum, rather she just kept chewing it intermittently! It could have been fatal, though. Hopefully, I have enlightened many lives with this information...and let me know if you have a good flow chart for this tricky syndrome. Go forth and prosper!