Editor’s Note:
For older children who can already express their feelings, dressing is not a big problem. However, for infants, parents or grandparents have to handle how much to wear and how much to wear. Parents are always afraid of their children being frozen. The weather gets slightly colder and wraps their children like zongzi. However, they do not realize that wearing too much will cause big problems.
Let the pediatrician talk to us about the baby’s clothes.
Chinese Parents’ Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in Dressing
Before, a newborn of more than ten days old was admitted to our hospital. He had fever and red and swollen soft tissues in both thighs. Considering the soft tissue infection caused by bacteria, such soft tissue infection is rare in cities now.
On the day of ward rounds, the room temperature was over 20 degrees. Both the parents of the child were wearing only one short sleeve, but the child was wearing five clothes inside and outside. The outermost one was a thick cotton-padded clothes. The child’s little face was red and he reached out and touched it. The child was covered with sweat. I am not surprised that soft tissue infection occurred when the clothes were dressed like this.
Such parents are not one or two, But often can meet. Some children with fever, ward rounds when ordered to reduce a little clothing, parents indifferent, do their own hands to reduce a quilt for children, take off a piece of clothes, turned to find the child grandmother to add back. Because some parents think that children should cover their sweat, sweat cover out, cold will be good.
I can understand the parents of the child’s thoughts. The child is small and afraid of freezing. Wearing more can keep him warm. However, there must be a limit to everything. Wearing less clothes will freeze, but wearing more clothes will damage the child’s health.
Wearing too much clothes can also harm children.
1. Wu Re Syndrome
For newborns and infants, the most serious consequence of wearing too much is the heat-covering syndrome.
The child’s body is confined to thick clothes, and the heat generated cannot be dissipated. The temperature in the clothes is getting higher and higher. The child is small and will not tell or struggle when it is too hot. Long-term high temperature leads to high fever, dehydration, hypoxia, coma, and even respiratory and circulatory failure of the child. This is the heat-covering syndrome.
This is a disease with Chinese characteristics, especially in economically and culturally backward areas. Every year, many children die as a result. Some children are rescued, but they suffer from brain injury and permanent disability.
2. Developmental dislocation of hip joint
In addition to covering heat syndrome, dressing too much will also limit children’s limb activities and make children’s movement develop backward. There is a disease called developmental dislocation of hip joint, the incidence rate in the northern region is significantly higher than that in the southern region, which may be related to the children in the northern region wearing more clothes and the long-term fixation of lower limbs in inappropriate body positions.
3. Skin Diseases
Children’s metabolism is already very vigorous. Too many clothes make children more prone to sweat and skin diseases such as prickly heat and folliculitis. These small infection lesions may also spread and lead to soft tissue infection and even cellulitis, just like the child mentioned at the beginning of the article.
4. Dehydration and shock covered up
It is more dangerous to cover the quilt when a child has a cold and fever. Failure to dissipate heat may lead to a continuous rise in body temperature, even above 42 ℃. A large amount of sweating in a short period of time may also lead to dehydration and shock of the child.
5. More susceptible to illness
Some pediatricians also have the experience that children who often catch colds and fever are often those who wear many thick clothes. Parents think that wearing more clothes can prevent their children from catching cold, but they do not know that this will lead to less exposure to cold air, more vulnerability to climate change and more susceptible to illness.
How, the child, is suitable for dressing?
Human clothing has two main purposes, one is to cover the body and the other is to keep warm. So how is more suitable for dressing children?
When the temperature is high enough to be above 24 ℃, there is no need for what to keep warm when awake. It is enough to wear a single coat to cover the body, and so is the child.
When the temperature is lower than 24 ℃, adults will sense the changes in temperature and adjust the number and thickness of clothes according to the signals of their temperature receptors all over the skin. Infants and young children will not tell by themselves, we can refer to the following principles:
- Within one month: Children wear one (average thickness) more clothes than adults. More than one month: Children’s body temperature regulation ability is basically the same as adults, can refer to adults to dress like. Over three years old: children will express themselves more cold and warm, as long as the child does not feel cold, there is no need to wear more. You can also touch the palm and back of the child, if it is warm, the body also does not sweat, it means the clothes are more appropriate.
If you love your child, you should let him dress comfortably, not let him wear more clothes. Those children who were killed by the heat were killed by the ignorance of their parents and the backwardness of social civilization. This is not one person’s fault, but the problem of the whole society.
Editor: Hugh
Author: Pei Honggang
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