Peer-reviewed article
Sleep-related difficulties in healthy children and adolescents
Christiane Lewien, Jon Genuneit, Christof Meigen, Wieland Kieß, Tanja Poulain ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study describes the prevalence of sleep difficulties in 855 children aged 4-9 years and 1,047 adolescents aged 10-17 years in Germany. About 22.6% of children and 20% of adolescents had problematic levels of sleep difficulties. Sleep problems varied by age and gender, with boys more affected in childhood and girls more affected in adolescence. Lower socioeconomic status was associated with more sleep difficulties in adolescents but not younger children.
Key points
- 22.6% of children aged 4-9 and 20.0% of adolescents aged 10-17 showed problematic amounts of sleep-related difficulties
- Sleep duration decreased by 14 minutes per year of age in the child sample
- Bedtime resistance, sleep onset delay, anxiety, night waking, and parasomnia were more frequent in younger children
- Sleep difficulties were more frequent in boys in the child sample but in girls in the adolescent sample
- Lower socioeconomic status was associated with increased sleep difficulties in adolescents but not in younger children
Limitations
This is a descriptive study without intervention, so it cannot demonstrate causation or test whether any treatments reduce sleep difficulties. The study relies on parent-reported data for younger children and self-report for adolescents, which may not capture all aspects of sleep problems.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: As sleep-related difficulties are a growing public health concern, it is important to gain an overview of the specific difficulty areas of the most vulnerable individuals: children. The current descriptive study presents the prevalence of sleep-related difficulties in two large samples of healthy children and adolescents and outlines the effects of age, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES) on various sleep-related difficulties. METHODS: Participants were 855 4-9 year-old children (child sample) and 1,047 10-17 year-old adolescents (adolescent sample) participating 2011-2015 in the LIFE Child study, a population-based cohort study in Germany. Parents of the child participants completed the Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ), whereas adolescents self-administered the Sleep Self Report (SSR). Familial SES was determined by a composite score considering parental education, occupational status, and income. Multiple regression analyses were carried out to address the research question. RESULTS: Among 4-9 year-old children, the mean bedtime was reported to be 8 p.m., the mean wake-up time 7 a.m., and sleep duration decreased by 14 min/year of age. 22.6 % of the children and 20.0 % of the adolescents showed problematic amounts of sleep-related difficulties. In the child sample, bedtime resistance, sleep onset delay, sleep-related anxiety, night waking, and parasomnia were more frequent in younger than older children. In the adolescent sample, difficulties at bedtime were more frequent among the younger adolescents, whereas daytime sleepiness was more prominent in the older than the younger adolescents. Considering gender differences, sleep-related difficulties were more frequent among boys in the child sample and among girls in the adolescent sample. Lower SES was associated with increased sleep-related difficulties in the adolescent, but not the child sample. CONCLUSIONS: The present results report sleep-related difficulties throughout both childhood and adolescence. Gender differences can already be observed in early childhood, while effects of SES emerge only later in adolescence. The awareness for this circumstance is of great importance for pediatric clinicians who ought to early identify sleep-related difficulties in particularly vulnerable individuals.