Abstract TU272: When "Enough" Sleep Isn't Enough: Low Concordance and Hidden Sleep Deficits among Parents and Children

Abstract

Introduction: Parental sleep quality (total duration and latency - the duration it takes to fall asleep) can affect parental health and their child’s sleep behaviors. However, most studies fail to measure sleep latency and have not looked at the concordance of sleep quality between parent-child dyads. This study examined parental and child sleep behaviors, the concordance of these behaviors, and evaluated the associations between sleep health and other health indicators in families from low-income households. Hypotheses: We hypothesized that most parents and children met sleep quality recommendations, dyads were highly concordant in meeting guidelines, and parents who met guidelines had optimal cardiovascular health (CVH). Methods: Data from 195 parents and their 6–11-year-olds recruited from a pediatric academic medical center were analyzed. Sleep health was measured via parent report through the validated RU-SATED and Life's Essential 8 survey. Concordance was met if both parent and child dyads met sleep duration and latency guidelines for their age. CVH was measured through the AHA’s Life's Essentials 8 metric. Pearson chi-squared tests were used to determine the association between parental sleep latency, duration, and CVH indices. Results: Most parents were female (n= 192) with a mean (±SD) age of 32.0 (±7.8) years. About half (54%) of the parents reported sleeping 7–9 hours and reported taking <30 minutes to fall asleep nightly (latency, 56.6%). Among children, 83% met their recommended sleep duration; 30% met the recommended latency. However, parental-child concordance was low: Only 12% and 43% of dyads met guidelines for sleep duration and latency, respectively (Table 2). There were no statistically significant associations between parent meeting sleep duration and latency recommendations and self-reported CVH metrics or family history of cardiovascular disease (Table 3). Conclusion: Few parents and children met sleep guidelines, both in terms of duration and latency. While our study did not show a relationship between parental sleep duration or latency and CVH metrics, this may be due to the small sample size. Providers should consider screening for all metrics of sleep quality to optimize sleep health. Future studies should use objective measures, follow participants longitudinally, and examine contextual factors to address systemic barriers to healthy sleep.