Time in bed, quality of sleep and school functioning of children

Abstract

This study describes the relationship of time in bed and quality of sleep with concentration and functioning at school. Neurotic and psychosomatic symptoms have been used as control variables. The sample consisted of 449 Dutch children in the seventh and eighth grades of elementary school. The age of the children varied between 9 y 5 mo and 14 y 5 mo. Seven schools participated in the research, with a total of 18 classes. The results indicated that 43% of the children had difficulty getting up in the morning. Furthermore, 15% of the children reported sleep problems and 25% did not feel rested at school. Time in bed and sleep quality show no relationship with concentration. Sleep quality, feeling rested at school and less distinct bedtimes were clearly related to school functioning. Another result was that children who had no difficulty getting up displayed more achievement motivation. Being open to the teacher's influence and achievement motivation depended mainly on sleep characteristics. Not getting bored at school, self-image as a pupil and control over aggressive behaviour were also influenced by gender, age, neuroticism and neurosomaticism.

Sleep quality, duration and behavioral symptoms among 5–6-year-old children

“…Among older children and similar to our findings, short sleep duration has been linked with depressiveness [2,30] and behavioral problems [2,28]. Sleep quality, well-defined bedtimes and feeling rested at school has been associated with better functioning at school [19] and an early start-time for school has been linked with daytime sleepiness and attention problems [6,11]. Sleep impairment and its effects on school performance have been reviewed in detail by Wolfson and Carskadon [31] and those who perform well at school tend to go to bed earlier, sleep more, and have more regular sleep/wake rhythms.…”

Nutritional status, growth and sleep habits among Senegalese adolescent girls

“…Sleep lengths extracted from questionnaire studies during school time range from a minimum of 449766 min 7.29 (Wolfson & Carskadon, 1998) to 620763 min 10.20 (Gulliford et al, 1990). Hence, results presented here hold a median range within these values (Gulliford et al, 1990;Mercer et al, 1998;Wolfson & Carskadon, 1998;Lee et al, 1999;Mantz et al, 2000;Meijer et al, 2000;Laberge et al, 2001;Sorensen & Ursin, 2001). Comparisons are only tentative, since the meaning of indicators is not always the same (time in bed vs sleep length) and the method may differ.…”

“…For epidemiological purposes, most (Mercer et al, 1998;Wolfson & Carskadon, 1998;Lee et al, 1999;Mantz et al, 2000;Meijer et al, 2000;Laberge et al, 2001;Sorensen & Ursin, 2001) or proposed to parents (Gulliford et al, 1990), or else a diary kept by the subject (Thorleifsdottir et al, 2002). In these studies, differences between time spent in bed and effective sleep duration are difficult to ascertain.…”

“…There is great interest in studying the sleep habits of children and adolescents, since they appear to be linked to somatic disorders such as respiratory diseases (Camhi et al, 2000), injuries (Valent et al, 2001), overweight or obesity (Gupta et al, 2002), psychological conditions including anxiety, depression, and aggressive behaviour (Meijer et al, 2000); alcohol or substance consumption and social and family disturbances (Vignau et al, 1997;Stein et al, 2001). Many adolescents complain about too short a sleep length, difficulties in falling asleep and waking up, and sleepiness during the daytime (Vignau et al, 1997).…”

“…A prospective study demonstrated that, without restriction, spontaneous length of sleep remained fairly constant throughout pubertal stages with a median time of 9.2 h (Carskadon et al, 1980). In industrialized countries, despite a noteworthy variability, studies report a longer sleep duration during the weekend (Mercer et al, 1998;Wolfson and Carskadon, 1998;Mantz et al, 2000;Meijer et al, 2000;Shinkoda et al, 2000;Thorleifsdottir et al, 2002).…”