Children between 6 and 12 years old should sleep between nine and 12 hours per night, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Data from the study showed on average, children were got eight hours and 20 minutes, while their parents reported their kids were asleep for more than nine and a half hours.
“What parents often don’t see is how long it takes for kids to fall asleep or how often they wake up during the night,” Diana S. Grigsby-Toussaint, the study’s senior author and an associate professor at the Brown University School of Public Health, said in a statement.
Researchers deployed wrist-worn accelerometers to track bedtimes and other factors, such as how long it took children to fall asleep, how frequently they woke up, and the time they actually spent sleeping, according to Brown. Meanwhile, parents completed surveys and kept daily sleep diaries.
The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, officials said.
“Children were awake for an average of more than 38 minutes per night, while parents reported under five minutes of nighttime wakefulness for their children,” Brown officials said.
The data also found disparities among ethnicities: Fifty six percent of the study participants were Latino, and those children averaged a little more than eight hours of sleep per night while the non-Latino participants averaged eight and a half, officials said.
More than 22 percent of non-Latino participants met sleep guidelines, but only 4.4 percent of Latino participants did, according to researchers.
“The study also explored whether parents were aware of problems related to sleep. Latino caregivers, for instance, were more likely than other groups to report that sleep was a concern, and to say their child had trouble staying asleep. Meanwhile, non-Latino parents tended to underreport sleep problems,” Brown officials said.
“Parents in both groups tended to overestimate how much sleep their kids were getting,” they said.
Researchers noted cultural factors could have played a role in the findings, as later bedtimes, co-sleeping, and room sharing “are more common in Latino households” and “might influence both sleep behavior and parental perceptions.”
“Our work indicates that we need to improve our communication about sleep with families to capture the multiple dimensions of it,” Grigsby-Toussaint said.
Another factor in play: the wrist devices used in the study have limitations, according to researchers. They “don’t always distinguish between periods of wakeful rest and sleep,” officials said.
“This means that the tracking devices, too, could over-estimate children’s sleep volume,” Brown officials said.
To improve their children’s sleep, parents can follow “tried-and-true sleep tips,” including “bedtime routines, maintaining consistent sleep and wake schedules — even on the weekends — encouraging physical activity and exposure to natural light and green spaces during the day, limiting screens close to bedtime, and creating a comfortable sleep environment,” Grigsby-Toussaint said.
Christopher Gavin can be reached at christopher.gavin@globe.com.
