13/09/2018
Thank you again to all families who took part in the study ‘understanding the links between parents’ thoughts, bedtime behaviours and children’s sleep’.
For anyone who may be interested in the results, an overview of the findings are provided below:
Particular sleep-related thoughts and beliefs held by parents about their child’s sleep, as well as certain types of behaviours used by parents to settle children to sleep, have been found to play a role in some child sleep problems. However, it remains unclear the extent to which these aspects in both mothers and fathers affect child sleep. The purpose of this study was to explore how parents’ sleep-related thoughts, practices and also their knowledge was related to child sleep. Forty-six mothers, fathers and their 12-24 month old toddlers from Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire took part. Both mothers and fathers completed questionnaires about a range of parent and child variables. Actigraphs (a small wrist-watch liked device) provided an objective measure of the child’s and their primary night-time caregiver’s sleep. It was found that parents who had more worries about their own sleep were more likely to have more concerns about their child’s sleep. Parents who had less knowledge about child sleep were also more likely to be actively involved in settling their child to sleep. The thoughts and practices which were linked to whether or not the parent felt their child had a sleep problem were different for mothers and fathers. These results suggest that sleep-related thoughts, practices and knowledge of both mothers and fathers are relevant to children’s sleep. Increased understanding of the relationship between these factors could have important consequences for how child sleep and sleep problems, are understood, assessed, and if necessary treated.
Please do feel free to get in touch if you have any queries or questions that relate to this study :)
