Bedtime Parenting Quality and Household Chaos Predict Child Sleep during the Transition to Kindergarten

• In Event: The Implications of Family and Home Environments for Development in Early and Middle Childhood

Abstract

The transition to kindergarten is an important milestone in children’s development, with implications for academic and socio-emotional outcomes (Jarrett et al., 2018). Little is known, however, about the role of sleep in this transition. Evidence suggests that sleep disturbances are predictive of deteriorated daytime functioning in multiple domains including cognitive (Liu et al., 2012), behavioral and emotional outcomes (Cortesi et al., 2012), and socio-ecological models of sleep posit that multiple domains of children’s environment influence child sleep, for better or for worse (El-Sheikh & Sadeh, 2011). One such domain is the role of family context in relation to children’s sleep patterns (Covington et al., 2021). The present study examined bedtime parenting quality and household chaos as predictors of children’s sleep quality across the kindergarten year. This study is unique in its examination of two family context predictors that operate at two theoretically distinct levels of analysis: bedtime parenting, conceptualized as a more proximal influence, and household chaos, conceptualized as a more distal influence, in predicting child sleep.
Data from 93 families with kindergarten aged children were drawn from a larger NIH-funded study. A measurement burst design using daily assessments across a full week collected child sleep data in mid-to-late August (pre-K), late September/early October (early transition), early-mid November (mid-transition), and April (late transition) of the kindergarten year. Children wore AW-64 actiwatches (Philips/Respironics, Inc) for 7 consecutive nights during each assessment period and multiple sleep parameters were derived including children’s sleep duration and fragmentation. Both mothers’ and fathers’ emotional availability was observed during one evening at pre-K and at early transition from digital videos of parent-child bedtime interaction using Biringen’s Emotional Availability Scales (EAS). Household chaos (HC) was observed on all occasions using the Descriptive In-home Survey of Chaos—Observer ReporteD (DISCORD; Whitesell et al., 2015). Parental EA and HC scores reliable and highly stable across time points and were combined for each participant.
Multilevel models were fitted to examine how parental bedtime EA and HC individually and interactively predicted children’s sleep. Both EA and HC were included as level-2 variable and time was centered at the pre-K period. Results indicated that child sleep duration and fragmentation decreased across kindergarten. Additionally, greater maternal EA predicted longer sleep duration. Importantly, interactions between HC and time and between EA and HC also predicted child sleep. Simple slope tests revealed that child sleep duration decreased across the kindergarten year only in families with higher levels of chaos but not for families with lower levels of chaos (Figure 1). In addition, Figure 2 suggests that children are protected from the debilitating effects of household chaos when mothers are emotionally available.
These findings suggest that both proximal and distal factors of the caregiving environment influence children’s sleep quality across the kindergarten year. Although bedtime mothering was conceptualized as having more proximal influence on children’s sleep, it may also serve as a protective factor against detrimental effects of household disorganization. This study has important implications for interventions aiming to improve adjustment to kindergarten.

Authors

• Ulziimaa Chimed-Ochir, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Presenting Author

• Ekjyot Kaur Saini, Pennsylvania State University, University Park

• Liu Bai, Pennsylvania State University, University Park

• Kaitlin Marie Trexberg, Pennsylvania State University, University Park

• Brian Crosby, Pennsylvania State University

• Douglas M Teti, The Pennsylvania State University