Poor Parental Sleep and the Reported Sleep Quality of Their Children

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Pediatric sleep disturbances are regularly diagnosed on the basis of parental reports. However, the impact of parental sleeping problems on parental perceptions and reports of their child's sleep has not yet been studied. We hypothesized that poor parental sleep decreases the parent-reported child sleep quality.

The association of mothers' and fathers' insomnia symptoms with school-aged children's sleep assessed by parent report and in-home sleep-electroencephalography

“…A methodological issue that could account for the association between parental insomnia and parent reports of children's sleep difficulties in particular, is that parental insomnia may affect their perception of children's sleep without any real underlying sleep problem of the child [24]. This can be important because parents are often the first to perceive their children's sleep problems and to seek help.…”

0934 Evaluating the Effects of General Anesthesia on Sleep in Children Undergoing Elective Surgery

“…Parents rate the frequency of a specific behaviour during the past month using a four-point scale, ranging between 0 for "Never" and 3 for "Very Often". The quality of parental sleep can be a potential predictor for poor postoperative sleep quality in children, where parents who sleep poorly tend to overestimate sleeping problems in their children (Ronnlund et al, 2016). As an attempt to control for confounding effects, the PSQI was administered to collect information pertaining to parental sleep quality.…”

“…As a result, a social desirability bias may influence parents to report a total sleep time that is higher compared to the observed total sleep time. Parents with poor sleep can also misreport their child's sleep (Ronnlund et al, 2016). Thus, using parent-reported assessments for their child's sleep can be insufficient, and actigraphy is required to provide additional information about a child's sleep patterns.…”

“…These results suggest that parents who have children undergoing surgery tend to experience poorer sleep quality as compared to parents of healthy children, but there is an existing gap in the literature that specifically addresses sleep quality in this population. Evaluating the quality of parental sleep is essential as previous studies have shown that parents with poor sleep tend to overestimate their child's sleeping disturbances compared to an objective measure such as actigraphy (Ronnlund et al, 2016). Parental sleep quality is likely to be important and relevant in the diagnosis, treatment and research exploring sleep disturbance in children.…”

What about the parents? : Sleep quality, mood, saliva cortisol response and sense of coherence in parents with a child admitted to pediatric care

“…hypertension and type 2 diabetes (Redeker, 2011, Liu et al, 2013. A recent study showed that parents reporting sleep difficulties of their own may also overestimate sleep problems in their children (Rönnlund et al, 2016). The conclusion in that study was that future diagnostic methods and treatments in the field of pediatric sleep disorders, should not only take the child into consideration, but the whole family, including the parents.…”