Permissive Parenting May Be Hurting Kids' Sleep
- Date:
- October 9, 1997
- Source:
- Center for the Advancement of Health
- Summary:
- Lax parenting that doesn't set limits or enforce rules consistently is likely to mean the child isn't getting a good night's rest. Researchers also found that intense negative temperament, highly emotional children and those with behavioral problems are also more likely to have problems sleeping at night.
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Permissive parenting that doesn't set limits or consistently enforce rules when a child is awake is likely to mean the child isn't getting a good night's rest.
When a research team compared 80 children from a sleep disorders clinic with 52 others at a primary care clinic for well children, they found that lax and permissive parenting was strongly associated with sleep disturbances among the children in the well group. Lax parenting was described as parents giving in, allowing rules to go unenforced, or providing positive consequences for bad behaviors.
Judith Owens-Stively, MD, and a research team from Rhode Island Hospital, Brown University School of Medicine (Providence, RI) and George Washington University (Washington, DC) publish their findings in the October Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. The children in the study averaged 5.7 years old.
The researchers suggest that one reason the permissive-parenting link did not show up as well in the sleep-disorders pediatric group may be that children with more serious behavioral problems traceable to lax parenting probably are sent to a mental health clinic instead of a sleep disorders clinic.
"It is also possible," they write, "that other parent-related variables not directly measured in this study, such as marital discord or mater
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