Culture Post: Regular Bedtime More Important Than Sleep Quality, Duration For Kid’s Behavior

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by MedicalDaily.

Good sleep keeps the children fuss-free and happy. But can variations in sleep schedules affect their behavior? Researchers have found that regular sleep patterns influence children’s behavior and attitude more than the duration or quality of sleep.

The latest study, published in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, revealed that children with consistent sleep schedules have better control of their emotions and behavior when they work with others or are under stress.

“Children who had consistent bedtimes were generally able to regulate their behavior and emotions. On the other hand, children whose bedtimes and sleep times were all over the place showed more impulsivity and less control,” Adwoa Dadzie, who led the study said in a news release.

The researchers tracked sleep and behavior data from 143 six-year-old children participating in the Penn State Intervention Nurses Start Infants Growing on Healthy Trajectories (INSIGHT) study. Using wrist-worn monitors, they recorded various aspects of the children’s sleep, including bedtime, wake time, sleep midpoint, sleep efficiency, and total sleep duration.

“Results showed that the more a child’s bedtime varied each night, the worse they regulated their behavior and emotions,” the news release stated.

Kids whose bedtime varied less, say, 20 minutes, showed more self-regulation than those whose bedtime varied by two hours across the week.

“Findings support the importance of consistency in sleep timing and how this may play a greater role in children’s behavioral and emotional outcomes than mean actigraphic sleep duration and quality,” the researchers concluded.

Source: MedicalDaily
https://www.medicaldaily.com/regular-bedtime-more-important-sleep-quality-duration-kids-behavior-study-472657

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