Ongoing family conflict and disorganization can promote unhealthy coping mechanisms and chronic stress, which can lead to high BMIs, inflammation, and irregular heart rate variability. Parents' physical and emotional presence can change children sleeping patterns. Parents mediate hypertension risk in their children by:

• Being a zeitgerber, or an environmental cue and regulator of sleep.

• Providing enough emotional security for deep sleep.

• Concordance in sleep schedules, or synching parental sleep routines with children routines.