PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — While many parents assume that putting a child to bed means they will quickly be asleep, a new study from researchers at Brown University found that’s often not the case.
The study, published in Frontiers in Pediatrics, tracked the sleep patterns of 102 elementary school children, over the course of a week. While 83% of parents believed their child was sleeping the right amount, sleep trackers showed that only 14% of the children met national sleep guidelines. The findings add to growing concerns that American children aren’t getting the sleep they need.
“What parents often don’t see is how long it takes for kids to fall asleep or how often they wake up during the night,” said Diana S. Grigsby-Toussaint, the study’s senior author and an associate professor at the Brown University School of Public Health.
To better understand what happens after the lights turn off, the researchers used wrist-worn accelerometers to track children’s bedtimes, how long it took them to fall asleep, how often they woke up and how much time they spent sleeping. Parents filled out surveys and daily sleep diaries. The goal was to see how well parents’ perceptions matched up with their children’s realities, Grigsby-Toussaint said.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children between ages 6 and 12 should get between nine and 12 hours of sleep per night. Data from the accelerometers showed that on average, the children were getting only eight hours and 20 minutes of actual sleep. Parents, however, reported their kids slept more than nine and a half hours.
Digging into data, the researchers found that the gap was due to time parents didn’t account for. Children were awake for an average of more than 38 minutes per night, while parents reported under five minutes of nighttime wakefulness for their children.
Racial and ethnic disparities in sleep patterns
To better understand racial and ethnic disparities in sleep, which Grigsby-Touissant said are rarely factored into sleep studies, the researchers looked at differences between Latino and non-Latino children — 56% of enrolled study participants were Latino. They found that Latino children averaged just over eight hours of sleep per night while non-Latino children averaged eight and a half. Only 4.4% of Latino children in the study met national sleep guidelines compared to 22.8% of non-Latino children.
The study also explored whether parents were aware of problems related to sleep. Latino caregivers, for instance, were more likely than other groups to report that sleep was a concern, and to say their child had trouble staying asleep. Meanwhile, non-Latino parents tended to underreport sleep problems.
Parents in both groups tended to overestimate how much sleep their kids were getting.
The team said that some of the findings could be explained by cultural factors, such as later bedtimes, co-sleeping and room sharing, which are more common in Latino households. These factors might influence both sleep behavior and parental perceptions. They hope future research can explore how home environments and parenting styles affect children’s sleep patterns.
“Our work indicates that we need to improve our communication about sleep with families to capture the multiple dimensions of it,” Grigsby-Toussaint said.
The research team, which included scientists from Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School and Brown University Health’s Rhode Island Hospital, also noted the limitations of wrist devices, which don’t always distinguish between periods of wakeful rest and sleep. This means that the tracking devices, too, could over-estimate children’s sleep volume.
To improve children’s sleep, the researchers encouraged families to take proactive steps, Grigsby-Toussaint said:
“This comes down to following those tried-and-true sleep tips to support healthy sleep habits and doing all the things we know helps people get their best rest: bedtime routines, maintaining consistent sleep and wake schedules — even on the weekends — encouraging physical activity and exposure to natural light and green spaces during the day, limiting screens close to bedtime, and creating a comfortable sleep environment.”
This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants 1R01MD016241 and 5P20GM139743). Additional Brown-affiliated authors included Aliana Rodriguez Acevedo, Diane Story, Lovisa Werner, David H. Barker, John E. McGeary and Shira I. Dunsiger.
