Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sleep
Sec. Pediatric and Adolescent Sleep
Volume 3 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frsle.2024.1420245
This article is part of the Research Topic Early Childhood Sleep, a Window on Developmental Outcomes View all articles

Within-child associations between sleep quality and emotional self-regulation over 6 months among preschool (3-5 year) age children

Provisionally accepted
Cassandra M. Godzik Cassandra M. Godzik 1*Delaina Carlson Delaina Carlson 2Oleksandra I. Pashchenko Oleksandra I. Pashchenko 3Grace Ballarino Grace Ballarino 2Jennifer A. Emond Jennifer A. Emond 4
  • 1 Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, United States
  • 2 Department of Epidemiology, Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College, Lebanon, New Hampshire, United States
  • 3 Full Circle Health Family Medicine Residency, Boise, United States
  • 4 Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objective: We leveraged an observational, repeated-measures study to examine the within-child associations between sleep quality and emotional self-regulation, controlling for between-child effects.: Children aged 3-to-5-years-old and one parent each were recruited from the community in Northern New England for a 6-month study on child media use, 2019-2022. Parents completed online surveys at baseline and 2-, 4-, and 6-months post-baseline. Child sleep quality was measured with the validated Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ) modified for preschoolers; higher scores indicate worse sleep quality (range 32-96). Child emotional self-regulation was measured with the validated Child Social Behavior Questionnaire (CSBQ); higher scores indicate better emotional self-regulation (range 1-7). Adjusted mixed effects linear regression was used to model the associations between nighttime sleep quality (exposure) and emotional self-regulation (outcome) measured at each of the four study time points while disaggregating the between-and within-child effects.Results: Children (n=91) were largely white, non-Hispanic (88.7%) and from a higher socialeconomic status. Sleep quality scores averaged 38.9 (SD: 6.6) at baseline; 23.1% of children had scores >41, which is considered evidence of significant sleep problems. Emotional Emotional self-regulation scores averaged 4.2 (SD: 1.0). There was a significant within-child association between sleep quality and emotional self-regulation. Specifically, aA decrease in sleep quality at any one timepoint, relative to each child's own mean sleep quality, related to worse emotional self-regulation (standardized beta, βs = -0.31; 95% CI: -0.53, -0.09); the between-child effect was not significant. Results were consistent when limited to children with complete data at all study visits (n=78). Conclusions: Findings support a causal, within-child association between sleep quality and emotional self-regulation in preschool-age children, with effects evident over 6-months.

    Keywords: emotional dysregulation, Self-regulation, Early Childhood, sleep problems, sleep quality

    Received: 19 Apr 2024; Accepted: 23 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Godzik, Carlson, Pashchenko, Ballarino and Emond. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Cassandra M. Godzik, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.