Household Chaos Moderates Links Between Sleep and Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors in Middle Childhood

• In Event: Sleep and Behavioral Adjustment in Early and Middle Childhood

Abstract

Greater household chaos and disorganization have been linked with more sleep problems, internalizing symptoms, and externalizing behaviors (Evans et al., 2005; Fiese & Winter, 2010; Spilsbury et al., 2017). However, few studies have examined intersections between sleep behavior, household chaos, and internalizing and externalizing symptoms together in a single study during childhood; most studies have examined sleep and household chaos independently in relation to internalizing and externalizing symptoms. It is critical to determine whether specific, malleable aspects of the home environment such as household organization or routines may help attenuate previously identified links between sleep and internalizing and externalizing symptoms (e.g., Quach et al., 2018) particularly during middle childhood when children begin experiencing shifts in sleep and may be increasingly vulnerable to internalizing and externalizing problems. Thus, we tested whether associations between sleep and internalizing and externalizing symptoms were stronger for children in high-chaos homes during middle childhood.
Participants were 708 children from a socioeconomically-diverse, longitudinal twin study (Mage = 8.44 years; 51.8% female; 58.8% European American). Wrist-based accelerometers (actigraphs) captured nighttime sleep duration, efficiency, sleep midpoint time (which accounts for bedtime and wake time), and duration variability across seven nights (M = 6.8, SD = .72). Parents reported sleep problems with Child Sleep Habits Questionnaire (Owens et al., 2000). The Chaos, Hubbub and Order Scale was used to measure household chaos and disorganization (Matheny et al., 1995). Primary caregivers reported internalizing and externalizing symptoms with the Health and Behavior Questionnaire (MacArthur Foundation, 2004). Two-level models were conducted in Mplus 7.0 to account for nested nature of twin data and missing data handling. Predictor variables were centered at zero and significant interactions were probed at 1 SD above and below the mean of household chaos (Preacher et al., 2006). Age, sex, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status were included in all analyses as covariates.
Descriptive statistics and zero-order correlations are provided in Table 1. Main effects revealed that girls had more internalizing symptoms and European American participants had fewer parent-reported externalizing symptoms. Greater sleep duration variability and older age were both associated with lower internalizing and higher externalizing symptoms. Higher sleep efficiency predicted fewer externalizing symptoms particularly for children in high-chaos homes. Greater sleep duration variability also predicted more externalizing symptoms for children in high-chaos homes (Figure 1). These finding suggest that sleep quality and variability (but not duration or timing) may be particularly important in relation to externalizing problems during middle childhood, with better sleep quality perhaps attenuating externalizing symptoms despite high levels of household chaos, and higher sleep duration variability and high household chaos together exacerbating externalizing symptoms. Interestingly, there were no significant interactions between sleep indicators and household chaos predicting internalizing symptoms, possibly because internalizing symptoms are less salient to parents and more difficult to accurately report. Overall, implementing consistent schedules or regular bedtimes may both reduce household chaos and improve sleep aspects of sleep like quality and consistency that may be linked to reducing externalizing symptoms in particular during middle childhood.

Authors

• Reagan S. Breitenstein, Appalachian State University
  Presenting Author

• Leah D Doane, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mary Davis, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathryn Lemery-Chalfant, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author