Individual, parental, and psychosocial characteristics associated with preschool children\u27s sleep disturbances

Most of the common sleep disturbances (the insomnias) observed in normal, healthy preschool children are thought to have a behavioral etiology stemming from psychosocial influences. Although parental characteristics have been broadly implicated as contributing to young children\u27s sleep difficulties, little data (beyond clinical observations) are available to buttress this claim. The present researcher examined the relationship of specific individual, parental, and psychosocial influences with preschool children\u27s sleep problems. The subjects were 110 children, ranging in age from 32 to 69 months, living in a two-parent family. The mother of each child completed the Sleep Assessment Inventory for Children developed by the present author, the Temperament Assessment Battery for Children (Martin, 1988), and the Family Routines Inventory (Jensen, James, Boyce, & Hartnett, 1983). A factor analysis of the sleep Assessment Inventory for Children identified four separate factors which were labelled Bedtime Hassles , Nighttime Entanglement , Parental Sharing , and Routines . The two dependent sleep variables, Bedtime Hassles and Nighttime Entanglement, were then correlated with selected independent variables representing child, parental, and psychosocial characteristics. A multiple regression analysis revealed that four of the independent variables were predictive of Bedtime Hassles: Complex bedtime routines, difficulty with conception, parental disagreement and maternal sleep difficulty. Twenty-one per cent of the criterion variance was accounted for by these four variables. For Nighttime Entanglement, three of the independent variables--parental disagreement, maternal employment during the child\u27s first three months of life, and not being the firstborn--accounted for 13% of the criterion variance. An observational study was conducted also to determine if differences in child compliance to maternal directives could be observed between a group of children selected for high scores on the Bedtime Hassles or Nighttime Entanglement variables, as measured by the SAIC, and a matched group selected for low scores. Slight differences were found in maternal visual orientation and modelling with the mothers of poor sleepers employing these strategies more frequently