Young Children Getting Fewer Hours of Sleep
December 1, 2005
While it has been widely reported that older children, teens
and adults aren’t getting enough sleep, it turns out that
younger children might be sleep deprived as well. A study by researchers
at Bradley Hospital and Brown Medical School finds that children
five and under get less than the recommended amount of sleep.
“We were very surprised to find how little preschool aged
children actually sleep at night, which we could measure with
our activity monitors. Children in our sample slept only about
8.7 hours at night and less than 9.5 hours per 24 hours when naps
were included. This contrasts with the 12 to 15 hours usually
recommended for children this age,” says lead author Christine
Acebo, PhD, of the Bradley Hospital Sleep and Chronobiology Research
Laboratory.
Other studies show that decreased sleep in older children, teenagers,
and adults may lead to physical and cognitive problems including—decreased
physical performance, lower academic performance and reduced cognitive
and other daytime functioning. Several studies in adults also
link lack of sleep to neuroendocrine abnormalities that may lead
to overeating and obesity.
“We are concerned that the problem of too little sleep
extends even to the youngest members of families, though we do
not know if this puts them at risk for problems down the line,”
says Acebo.
The research paper, published in the December issue of the journal
Sleep, corroborates the results of a recent survey of parents
by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) and Pampers Baby-Dry, showing
that many children from newborn to age four do not get the minimum
12 to 15 hours of sleep per day recommended by the NSF and pediatric
sleep experts.
Acebo and colleagues studied 169 children between one and five
years old, once a week in their homes. The children wore activity
monitors on their ankles or wrists to record their sleep, and
mothers also chronicled their children’s sleep habits in
detailed diaries.
“We wanted to study sleep in preschool aged children because
most of the research in this area is more than 25 years old—this
is one of the first studies to describe sleep patterns in this
age group with objective measures in recent years,” explains
Acebo.
The authors also found an interesting difference between families
of differing socioeconomic status (SES).
“Children in families with lower SES spent more time in
bed at night with more night waking and more variable bedtimes
than those in higher SES families who were in bed for fewer hours,
but had more regular schedules,” says Acebo.
In addition, the researchers found that the children in the study
awoke more often during the night than is usually described in
the scientific literature, but which is consistent with concerns
that many parents bring to their pediatricians.
Finally, they report that 82 percent of children older than 18
months were not taking naps on some or all days.
Acebo says that she was surprised to find that kids are sleeping
less than the recommendations that have been in place for the
past 50 years.
“I think based on what we know in older children, teens
and adults, it’s fair to speculate that insufficient sleep
in children would be related to difficulties—although this
is an area that’s been little studied for decades,”
says Acebo.
The results of this study are important because they indicate
that all members of American families may be getting insufficient
sleep in our fast paced, 24-hour society, Acebo and colleagues
say. Their results also reveal that more data is needed to determine
how much sleep small children really need and the effects of insufficient
sleep on later development
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