Effects of the home environment on school-aged children's sleep

Study Objective: Examine the relationship between the sleep behavior of elementary school-aged children and characteristics of the home environment. Design: Cross-sectional analysis of children participating in a cohort study. Setting: Cleveland Children's Sleep and Health Study, an ethnically mixed, urban, community-based cohort. Participants: Four hundred forty-nine children (50% girls, 46% African-American) aged 8 to 11 years. Measurements and Results: Sleep and health data were obtained from a child-completed 7-day sleep journal and caregiver-completed health and sleep questionnaire. Home-environment predictors were Middle-Childhood Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (MC-HOME) total score and Encouragement of Maturity and Physical Environment subscale scores. Sleep outcomes were mean nightly sleep duration, night-to-night variation in sleep duration, and bedtime of 11 PM or later. Adjusted analyses showed that higher Encouragement of Maturity subscale scores were associated with longer sleep duration (P < .05) and decreased odds of a bedtime at 11 PM or later (odds ratio = .74, 95% confidence interval, .58-.95). In girls, higher Encouragement of Maturity scores were also associated with decreased nightly variation in mean sleep duration (P < .001). Increases in total MC-HOME score were associated with increased mean sleep duration among African-American children only (P < .05). Conclusion: Collectively, results indicate that a parenting style encouraging social maturity in children is linked to healthier sleep patterns.