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Chill out: Air conditioner is fine for infant's room

Beth Whitehouse | Parental Guidance

July 13, 2008

We live in a Cape Cod home, and the upstairs gets hotter than 80 degrees. Is it all right to install a room air conditioner in my child's room? She is 2, still in a crib. Also, I am wondering at what temperature it should be set.

It's fine to install a room air conditioner - or central air conditioning - for your daughter's comfort, says Dr. Ronald Marino, associate chairman of the department of pediatrics at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola.

However, air conditioning is not required for children, he says. A ceiling fan can be a less expensive alternative, along with open windows to provide ventilation.

"It's really more a personal choice," he says. "There's no law that says she has to be in ... an air-conditioned environment. There is no harm in sleeping in a warm room. Every kid raised in Florida is in humid temperatures all the time."

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In fact, Marino just returned from a remote part of Costa Rica where he slept in a thatched-roof hut, and he was hot and fine, he says. "We've gotten used to cold in summer and hot in winter. That's not really the natural way of living."

However, children do tend to feel the extremes of temperature more profoundly than adults, and may suffer more than adults do in the heat, says Dr. Alessandra Rotella-Cohen, a pediatrician with University Plaza Pediatrics in Garden City. Babies especially don't maintain body temperature as well, she says.

As far as what temperature to stick to, Rotella-Cohen usually tells parents anywhere between 68 degrees and 72 degrees would be ideal. Room units usually need to be set at a lower temperature than central air to keep a room cool, she says, especially an upper floor room of an older home, where heat rises and collects. "Those houses can get pretty hot if it's a hot, humid day," Rotella-Cohen says.

Just as uncomfortable for the child as heat, though, don't make the room too cold, Rotella-Cohen says. "You don't want to make it like an igloo, either," she says.

The important thing is that the child is not sweating all night and remains hydrated. That is easier to maintain in a room that's air-conditioned and kept in the 70s, Marino says.

Be sure that the air-conditioning unit is placed out of the reach of the child, so he or she doesn't try to stretch for it and isn't able to tinker with the controls or the electrical cord.

Try to place the unit someplace where the air isn't blowing directly on the child, Rotella-Cohen advises. While it's an old wives' tale that the blowing air can cause pneumonia, it can cause muscle stiffness and discomfort, she says.

One additional caveat: Parents have to be careful not to ever completely overheat a child, Marino says. "Leaving a kid in a car is a terrible thing," he says.

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