Sleeping habits in Italian children and adolescents

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Sleep characteristics in children vary not only with age but also with ethnic and socio-cultural influences. Lifestyle issues as well as cultural beliefs and family values might influence sleep too. This review points out a high incidence of parental involvement at bedtime associated with longer sleep latency, a higher incidence of night wakings and a reduction of night-time sleep in preschoolers. We found also in school-aged children a high incidence of bedtime resistance, parental presence at bedtime, all-night cosleeping and TV use as a sleep aid in 30% of them. An irregular sleep schedule was found in 19% of adolescents; however, we found that Italian adolescents reported much better sleep hygiene than US teens. In Italy subjective, parental, and medical knowledge on sleep patterns in childhood and adolescence are limited and sometimes distorted. The results of our studies were more or less in line with those reported by studies carried out in other countries. However, some interesting differences in sleeping habits, probably culturally determined, were reported too. To better understand such differences in the future it would be desiderable to plan international sleep studies which embrace many cultures and languages, conducted in the same period with identical measures and administration procedures. These studies for their cross-national nature might provide the added opportunity to adopt common strategies for prevention of sleep problems in children and adolescents in different cultures.