Early parent–child relationships and child sleep at school age

Abstract

Few studies have investigated the associations between parent–child relationships and child sleep across distinct developmental stages using objective measures of sleep and while considering both parents. The current study aimed to investigate the longitudinal associations between the quality of parent–child interactions in toddlerhood and sleep duration and quality at early school age. The sample consisted of 88 families. The quality of mother–child and father–child interactions was assessed independently by observation when children were 18 months old. When children were 7 years old, their sleep was assessed objectively during three consecutive nights with actigraphy twice in a calendar year. Results showed that higher-quality mother–child (but not father–child) interactions predicted longer sleep duration nearly 6 years later. These findings suggest that some of the presumed influence of mother–child relationships on child sleep could be long-lasting.