This year in the Reid Hong and Wade, of the Department of Psychology in the University of Western Ontario, completed a study reviewing the relationship between common sleep problems and emotional and behavioural problems among 2- and 3-year-olds.
The contribution of sleep problems to emotional and behavioural problems among young children within the context of known risk factors for psychopathology was examined. Data on 2- and 3-year-olds, representative of Canadian children without a chronic illness, from three cross-sectional cohorts of the Canadian National Longitudinal Study of Child and Youth were analysed (n = 2996, 2822, and 3050).
The person most knowledgeable, usually the mother, provided information about her child, herself, and her family. Predictors included: child health status and temperament; parenting and any symptoms od maternal depression; family demographics (e.g., marital status, income) and functioning. Child sleep problems included night waking and bedtime resistance. Both internalizing/emotional (i.e., anxiety) and externalizing/behavioral problems (i.e., hyperactivity, aggression) were examined.
Adjusting for other known risk factors, child sleep problems accounted for a small, but significant, independent proportion of the variance in internalizing and externalizing problems. Structural equation models examining the pathways linking risk factors to sleep problems and emotional and behavioral problems were a good fit of the data. Results were replicated on two additional cross-sectional samples.
The relationship between sleep problems and emotional and behavioural problems is independent of other commonly identified risk factors. Among young children, sleep problems are as strong a correlate of child emotional and behavioural problems as symptoms of depression in mothers, a well-established risk factor for child psychopathology. Adverse parenting and depression in mums, along with difficult temperament all contribute to both sleep problems and emotional and behavioural problems.
Children's sleep problems appear to exacerbate emotional and behavioural problems.
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