From day one, one of the biggest concerns for parents is how much sleep their child is getting and whether it’s enough. From infancy through the teenage years (and sometimes even into adulthood), it’s easy to worry about the quantity and quality of your child’s sleep because it’s linked to everything from brain development to behavioral, mental health, and academic performance.
But what if we didn’t worry about the sleep issues that affect our children the most? A new study published this month in Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, Research has found that one aspect of a child’s sleep may be more important than we think: consistent bedtime and bedtime routines.
In this study, part of Penn State’s Intervention Nurse Initiating Infant Health Trajectory Growth (INSIGHT) study, researchers observed what 143 6-year-old children did when they were faced with a stressful problem to solve and required to complete a group activity. What happens. Some participants had consistent bedtimes, while others did not.
What they found was surprising. For seven nights before the test, the children wore smart watches to measure their bedtimes, wake-up times, sleep quality, and the children’s total sleep time. Children who had regular bedtimes performed best on tests including one that asked children to try to open a toy box with a set of keys that didn’t work, and another that asked children to decorate a picture frame with their parents.
If children go to sleep at around the same time each night, they will be less upset during the first test and will show less antisocial behavior (such as talking back, yelling, or refusing to participate) during the cooperative test. What’s even more interesting is that the more different their bedtime routines were, the worse off they were.
“Children who have a consistent bedtime are generally able to regulate their behavior and emotions,” study co-author Adwoa Dadzie told Science Daily. “On the other hand, children with inconsistent bedtime and sleep schedules showed more impulsivity and less control.”
For example, children who go to bed within 20 minutes are better able to self-regulate their emotions than those who go to bed within 2 hours.
Perhaps more interestingly, the amount and quality of the children’s sleep did not significantly affect their behavior during the test.
“It’s amazing,” study co-author Orfeu Buxton told Science Daily. “Parenting is important. When parents create clear structures and respond appropriately to their children’s needs, children’s… behavior has better outcomes—even years later.
This isn’t the first time research has found that sticking to a bedtime routine may be more important than other aspects of sleep hygiene. In 2023, the magazine sleep A study of 60,000 people in the UK found that going to bed on time had a greater impact on overall health than sleeping eight hours a night, the report said. Specifically, people in the top 20% of sleep regularity had a lower risk of all-cause death than those in the bottom 20% of sleep regularity.
And, in this study, sleep duration did not reduce the risk of death. There may be a lesson here for all ages!
Raising kids is hard, and having a consistent bedtime every night is nearly impossible, but making an effort to get everyone in the family (including you!) to bed at a consistent time may go a long way toward improving your family’s health and well-being .
