There are many factors that affect how well a child sleeps at night. Mona El-Sheikh, Alumni Professor of Human Development and Family Studies with AU's College of Human Sciences, directs a study of the effects of poor sleep in children and the factors that can contribute to restless nights.

"We live in an achievement-oriented society where sleep is equated with laziness, and given this culture, people undermine the importance of sleep," El-Sheikh said. Additionally, she said, data show that most elementary-aged children do not get the sleep they need. And while there is a vast amount of research available regarding how important sleep is for adults, El-Sheikh noticed that sleep in children was comparatively understudied.

She began to think about how quality sleep in children related to her research interests: children's well-being in the context of family adversity. "In the past, sleep research was mostly limited to pediatric medicine and not really the human development realm. This was really new at the time because it bridged different disciplines together," she said. "I saw it as a potential avenue that could really clarify pathways of risk."

With funding first from AU and then the National Science Foundation, El-Sheikh and her collaborator, Joseph Buckhalt of AU's College of Education, began studying the effects of sleep disruptions and how they relate to family risk and also to children's physical health, adjustment, cognitive functioning and emotional well being. "We now know that sleep disruptions are related to worse grades in school, lower achievement on standardized tests, detriments in general cognitive functioning measures, increased aggression, and increased depression and anxiety," she said.

Using more than 1,000 volunteers from five different school districts in Alabama, El-Sheikh and her team invite parents and children to a lab in Haley Center where the children’s physiological activity – including heart rate, breathing, sweating and hormone secretion – are assessed. They are then exposed to stressors like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube or listening to a tape of a mild argument while their activity continues to be monitored. Once the lab work is complete, the children return home where they continue their normal sleep routines for a week wearing an Actigraph, a wristwatch-like device that records the amount and quality of sleep, including tossing and turning. During the week, El-Sheikh also conducts interviews with parents and children about their sleep.

Through this ongoing process, El-Sheikh and her collaborators continue to improve understanding of the effects of sleep disruptions in children. In recent studies published in Child Development and Journal of Family Psychology, they found that marital tension, despite the parents’ best efforts to hide it, can set off a chain reaction in children, creating worry about the stability of the family which prevents them from relaxing and obtaining adequate sleep. Further, a study recently accepted to the Journal of Sleep Research found that the link between marital problems and children’s poor sleep is especially strong for those children prone to poor physiological activity. As a result, children suffer a range of negative consequences.

“Even mild loss of sleep can disrupt attention, alter information processing, weaken motivation, increase irritability and diminish emotional control,” El-Sheikh said. “For children, stress in the family can threaten their whole world.”

In another study, the team found that African American children and children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds fare worse than their counterparts when their sleep is disrupted. Published in the January/February 2007 issue of the Child Development, the study offers one of the first demonstrations that the relationship between children’s performance and sleep may differ among children of different backgrounds.