Whole family needs to sleep to protect against childhood obesity

A study looked into familial sleeping patterns and found that parents and children must get enough sleep to protect against childhood obesity.

Is sleep one of your most important family values? A new University of Illinois study suggests that it should be, reporting that more parental sleep is related to more child sleep, which is related to decreased child obesity.

"Parents should make being well rested a family value and a priority. Sleep routines in a family affect all the members of the household, not just children; we know that parents won't get a good night's sleep unless and until their preschool children are sleeping," said Barbara H. Fiese, director of the U of I's Family Resiliency Center and Pampered Chef Endowed Chair.

And the effects of sleeplessness go beyond just being tired the next day. Studies show that moms, dads, and their children are likely to gain weight as they lose sleep, she said.

Fiese suggests limiting your children's exposure to TV and other electronic devices to two hours a day and turning them off a half-hour before bedtime (needless to say, children should not have televisions in their bedrooms); spending some time in a calming, predictable routine, such as giving the child a bath or reading together; and making sure preschoolers are in bed in time to get the recommended 10 hours of sleep a night.

Then adults should follow a calming routine themselves. "We're learning more and more about how important it is to unplug for a half-hour or so before we go to bed. At a certain time, turn off your electronic devices -- even e-books -- and engage in whatever soothing ritual helps you to relax enough to sleep," she said.

Although the mechanism hasn't yet been identified, Fiese said that restorative sleep is thought to help regulate our metabolism. Her recent study showed that sleep is a protective factor in lowering the incidence of obesity in parents and being overweight in preschool children.

In the study, socioeconomic characteristics were assessed in relation to protective routines and prevalence of being obese or overweight for 337 preschool children and their parents. The routines assessed in parents included adequate sleep (over seven hours) and family mealtime routine. The four protective routines assessed in children were adequate sleep (10 or more hours per night), family mealtime routine, limiting screen-viewing time to less than two hours a day, and not having a bedroom TV.

The only significant individual protective factor against obesity or overweight in children was getting adequate sleep. Children who did not get enough sleep had a greater risk for being overweight than children who engaged in at least three of the protective routines regularly, even after controlling for parents' BMI and socio-demographic characteristics, Fiese said.

But the researchers also learned that the number of hours a parent sleeps is related to how much sleep children are getting, so that a parent's sleep has an effect on the likelihood that their children will be overweight or obese.

"We viewed how long parents slept and how long children slept as part of a household routine and found that they really did go together," she said.

In an earlier study, Fiese followed families for a year and was surprised when parents reported that their five- to seven-year-old children were going to bed as late as 11 p.m. When she looked deeper into the reason for these late bedtimes, she found that parents who worked late into the evening viewed those late-night hours with their children as a special time.

"They described cuddling on the couch, watching television, and the child falling asleep in his parent's arms at 10 or 11 p.m. and being carried to bed. You can understand how it happens, but that's too late for a child who has to get up and go to school the next day," she noted.

She noted that inadequate sleep is not just a problem for preschoolers but for elementary school children and high school students whose brains are still developing. Adults don't function well on inadequate sleep either, she noted.

Fiese sees obesity intervention as a three-legged stool in which every member of the family is able to eat well, play well, and sleep well.

"Paying attention to those three pillars of health -- good nutrition, enough exercise, and adequate sleep -- benefits everyone in the family," she said.

"Parent routines, child routines, and family demographics associated with obesity in parents and preschool-aged children" was published in the April 2014 issue of Frontiers in Psychology. Blake L. Jones of Purdue University and Barbara H. Fiese and the STRONG Kids Team of the University of Illinois co-authored the article. The Illinois Council for Agriculture Research, the U of I Health and Wellness Initiative, and USDA funded the study.

Members of the U of I's Strong (Synergistic Theory and Research on Obesity and Nutrition Group) Kids research team include Kristen Harrison, now of the University of Michigan, and the U of I's Kelly Bost, Sharon Donovan, Brent McBride, Diana Grigsby-Toussaint, Angela Wiley, and Margarita Teran-Garcia.

The University of Illinois Family Resiliency Center is dedicated to advancing knowledge and practices that strengthen families' abilities to meet life's challenges and thrive.

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Sleep Problems Run In Families - A Challenge for Parental Behavior

This article discusses she most recent Sleep in America Poll which shows that sleep issues can run in families.

Let's model best sleep hygiene by turning off our electronic toys.  JR

The National Sleep Foundation has released its annual Sleep in America Poll. This year, the poll examines sleep in the modern American family. How well—or not—are parents and children sleeping today? What are the challenges facing families in their pursuit of high-quality, plentiful sleep? What are the strategies that parents are using to help their children sleep, and how well are those strategies working? These are some of the questions that this year’s sleep survey investigates. The answers paint a picture of American families needing more sleep than they are getting, and struggling to contend with challenges to sleep that are a product of technologically-driven and highly-scheduled lives.

The survey included 1,103 adults with at least one child between the ages 6-17 living in their households. Among respondents, 54% were mothers. The families surveyed varied in size: 40% of respondents had 2 children, 24% had 1 child, and another 24% had 3 children.  Eleven percent of respondents had 4 or more children in their households. Adults reported on their own sleep and answered sleep questions about their children.

The results indicate challenges to sleep within American families that are, in fact, distinctly modern. Despite a high level of awareness of the importance of sleep to health and well being, neither children nor their parents are getting enough high quality sleep. This appears to be in part because of a heavy rotation of evening activities and commitments for both adults and children. Technology has taken up residence in most bedrooms—parents’ and children’s—to the detriment of sleep for both. The survey also found that parents’ own behaviors about sleep, as well as their willingness to set rules for their children’s sleep, can have a significant effect on sleep within the family:

• There is broad consensus among parents about the importance of sleep to their family’s mental and physical health. More than 90% of parents reported their belief that sleep is highly important to the health and well being of both adults and children in their family.

• Despite this recognition about the importance of sleep, both children and their parents are struggling to get enough sleep, and to sleep well. Fewer than 45% of children between the ages 6-17 are sleeping 9 or more hours per night. Recommendations for sufficient sleep amounts for children vary by age, but at all stages of childhood and adolescence, children need at least 9 hours of sleep per night. Younger school-age children need in excess of 10-11 hours nightly.

• As children age, their nightly sleep shortens, according to these results. Among 12-14 years olds, less than a third were reported to be sleeping 9 hours a night. Among older adolescents ages 15-17, a majority—56%–were reported to be sleeping no more than 7 hours nightly.

• Researchers compared the amount of sleep to quality of sleep, and found that children who slept less also were more likely to experience lower quality sleep. Among children who slept fewer than 7 hours a night, more than a quarter—28%–were reported to have poor quality sleep.

• Parents tended to rate their children’s sleep quality as significantly better than their own. Only 13% of adults reported their sleep as excellent, compared to 42% who rated their children’s sleep this highly.

• When asked about the challenges they face in getting enough sleep for themselves and their children, parents cited busy schedules as the most common obstacle. Evening activities were the most frequently cited challenge, both for parents and for children. For children, homework was also often reported as a nightly obligation that delayed bedtime or otherwise made sleep more difficult.

A substantial majority of adults and children are sleeping in proximity to at least one or more electronic device, according to the survey results. Televisions, computers, tablets, smartphones, gaming and music devices are commonly found in children’s bedrooms as well as in their parents’:

• 89% of adults and 75% of children have at least 1 electronic device in their bedrooms. Roughly half of children—51%–and 68% of adults have 2 or more electronic devices in their bedrooms.

• Televisions are the most common electronic devices in both parents’ and children’s bedrooms. MP3 players, tablets and smartphones are also common in both.

• The results also indicate that these devices are frequently left on during the night, rather than turned off before bedtime.

Electronic devices pose serious hazards to sleep when they take up residence in the bedroom. These devices emit light that disrupts sleep cycles and alters sleep-related hormone levels. The noise and stimulation that they provide is counterproductive to sleep, pushing back bedtimes and risking waking during the night when they are left on. It’s not surprising, then, that the survey found children with electronic devices in their bedrooms slept less and experienced lower quality sleep than those children without these gadgets in their bedrooms. Sleep quality suffered most dramatically when the devices were regularly left on during the night. And the more devices were present, the worse children slept.

Despite the sleep problems associated with electronics in the bedroom, many adults and children use these devices as a means to fall asleep, according to the survey. Sixty-six percent of adults reported a habit of relying on television or videos to help them fall asleep, and 37% used the internet. Parents reported that their children often used these same tactics to help them sleep: 47% of children were reported to watch television to fall asleep with some regularity, and 27% played games or used the internet to help bring about sleep.

One of the more striking details about how technology is intruding on sleep? The prevalence of texting and emailing after initially falling asleep, among both children and their parents. More than one quarter of adults—26%–either read or sent emails and text messages after first falling asleep for the night, as did 16% of children. More than half of the children who texted and emailed during the night had parents who did so as well.

This points out another important finding from the survey: the influence of parents’ sleep -and-technology-related habits on their children’s own sleep behaviors. The results indicate that children with electronic devices in their bedrooms are significantly more likely to have parents’ who also have these devices in their bedrooms. Children who let their devices run during the night are also more likely to have parents who do the same.

Ready for some good news about parental influence on kids’ sleep? Parents who establish sleep-related rules and enforce them consistently report their children sleep longer and better than children whose parents don’t apply regular rules to bedtime. These rules include consistent bedtimes, and also govern before-bed activities like watching television, using phones, playing video games, and drinking soda with caffeine. Children in households with sleep rules that are routinely enforced sleep an average of 1.1 additional hours per night.

There are a lot of moving pieces in this picture of the American family’s sleep life—busy schedules, crowded and active evening hours, constant temptation from technology. These threats to high-quality and plentiful sleep are not going away—in fact, they’re more likely to proliferate. It is our modern-day challenge to find ways to manage these ever-present demands with balance and moderation—and with an eye on protecting sleep.

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