Development Of Sleep Regulation In The Childhood: The Role Of Parental Mediation

Abstract

Based on the psychological model of body functions regulation, we suggested that psychological sleep regulation is developing during childhood and is affected by mediation strategies that parents use to support child’s sleep-wake cycle. 103 pairs of students and one of their parents replied six items on different parental sleep mediation strategies, filled Insomnia Severity Index, Dysfunctional Beliefs About Sleep Scale, Subjective Sleep Vulnerability Scale, Scale of Behavioral Factors of Sleep Disturbances. Parental control for bedtime when students were children is related to poorer students’ current sleep through higher probability of non-medication intake during poor sleep. The more parents worried about their sleep when they were children, the better evening sleep hygiene students demonstrate. They also go to bed earlier and have shorter sleep latency if their parents worried about their sleep when they were children. The more students in their childhood went to their parents if they couldn’t asleep, the shorter sleep latency they currently have. The more parents were annoying when they couldn’t sleep, the poorer sleep efficacy and higher subjective sleep vulnerability students report. Both coming to parents and parental annoying when children couldn’t fall asleep are indirectly related in students to poorer sleep through self-limiting behavior.

Keywords: Parental mediationpsychological sleep regulationsleep-related behaviorstudentssubjective sleep

Introduction

Development of sleep psychology had a long way from earlier studies of behavioral factors if insomnia (Spielman et al., 1987) demonstrated the role of sleep hygiene and sleep-related behavior triggering and perpetuating sleep disturbances to complex psychological models of insomnia including dysfunctional beliefs, hypertrophied attention to sleep, attempts aimed at sleep regulation and self-limitations (Espie et al., 2006; Morin, 1993; Perlis et al., 2011; etc.). Sleep hygiene is considered to be only one of the plenty of psychological and behavioral factors affecting human sleep (Irish et al., 2015) and effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia supports practical importance of these models (Trauer et al., 2015). Less is known about psychological sleep regulation in people without sleep disturbances although existing data demonstrate that in the case of sleep problems (that are frequent in population) many good sleepers tend to hold dysfunctional beliefs and efforts similar to those perpetuating insomnia (Rasskazova & Tkhostov, 2012). Moreover, experimental provoking in good sleepers of intentions to make himself sleep leads to objective sleep fragmentation (Rasskazova et al., 2014). There is an actual question in this context of how this psychological regulation of sleep is developing in people and what are the factors that makes in so vulnerable to insomnia perpetuation.

Despite the fact that sleep disorders and complaint are extremely frequent during early childhood and in adolescents (Owens, 2008), there are just a few studies on psychological factors of sleep regulation in children and especially – on the role of parental regulation of children’s sleep in further own sleep regulation development. In fact, some studies demonstrate that parental beliefs dysfunctional beliefs about their children’s sleep are related to children’s sleep (Gregory et al., 2009, Ng et al., 2013). It should be also noted that studies of parental beliefs and strategies of children’s sleep mediation is very sensitive to the culture so there is a clear need in taking into account cultural context of the studies of sleep regulation in children (Owens, 2004).

Problem Statement

Based on the psychological model of body functions regulation (Rasskazova & Tkhostov, 2012), we suggested that psychological sleep regulation in humans is developing during childhood and is affected by mediation strategies that parents use to support child’s sleep-wake cycle.

Research Questions

The aim of the study was to reveal the relationships between parental strategies of mediation of their children’s sleep and later sleep-related behavior and sleep quality in these children when they became adults (students).

Purpose of the Study

We hypothesized that:

1.Regardless of dysfunctional beliefs about sleep, sleep quality time and effectiveness in students is related to mediation strategies that their parents used in their childhood to control their sleep-wake cycle. In particular, control over time of going to sleep would be related to better sleep while parental annoying when child cannot fall asleep is related to poorer sleep in students after years.

2.Students’ own sleep related behavior (sleep hygiene, self-limiting behavior after bed nights, medication and non-medication intake during poor nights) mediate the relationship between parental sleep regulation strategies and students’ sleep after years.

Research Methods

Findings

Strategies of parental regulation of their child’s sleep

As shown in Figure 1 , parental control over their child’s sleep is rather wide-spread. Almost half of students reported that their parents worried about their sleep and after bad nights suggested to go to bed earlier. When participants couldn’t sleep in their childhood frequent parental strategy was to make the child just to lie down trying to sleep. One in three went to parents when couldn’t fall asleep and one in seven reported that parents were annoyed in such situations.

None of the strategies were related to child’s gender or parental age.

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Conclusion

Although there was a long period of time between childhood and becoming university students, retrospective data supports that parental sleep regulation strategies in the past could be related to current students sleep both directly and indirectly.

In particular, parental control for bedtime when students were children is related to less current students’ medication and non-medication intake during poor sleep and has an indirect effect on students’ current sleep through this sleep-related behavior. We could hypothesize that better parental control leads to better sleep-wake cycle that could be a buffer factor in sleep disturbances perpetuations and attempts to regulate sleep by any substances.

The more parents worried about their sleep when they were children, the better evening sleep hygiene students demonstrate. They also go to bed earlier and have shorter sleep latency if their parents worried about their sleep when they were children. The more students in their childhood went to their parents if they couldn’t asleep, the shorter sleep latency they currently have. The more parents were annoying when they couldn’t sleep, the poorer sleep efficacy and higher subjective sleep vulnerability students report. However, both coming to parents and parental annoying when children couldn’t fall asleep are related in students to current self-limiting behavior after bad nights and are indirectly (mediated by self-limiting behavior) related to poorer sleep. In general, we suggest that parental negative emotional reaction to child’s difficulties to fall asleep could be the factor of poorer sleep both by negative expectations about sleep that children have (directly) and attempts to have some rest and to have less responsibilities after bad night. Metaphorically said, the bad night might mean for these people “stressful” night and they try to have rest after it. On the contrary, parental attention and support could be positive direct factor leading to positive expectations about sleep. However, when child comes to parents at night it seems also to support his or her self-limiting behavior and thus could negatively affect sleep as well.

The major limitation of the study is its retrospective design. Further studies on “parents – children” and “parents – adolescents” pairs could provide more detailed picture of psychological sleep regulation development.

Acknowledgments

Research is supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project No. 20-013-00740 “Development and disturbances of sleep-wake psychological regulation system: an approach of psychology of bodily functions regulation”.

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