Khaberni - While many parents assume that putting their child to bed means they will fall asleep quickly, a new study conducted by researchers at Brown University found that this often overlooks the amount of time children take to fall asleep, and the number of times they wake up during the night.
In this study, researchers tracked the sleep patterns of 102 elementary school children over a week. While 83% of the parents believed their children were getting enough sleep, sleep tracking devices showed that only 14% of the children met sleep guidelines.
According to "Medical Express," these findings add to the growing concerns about children not getting enough sleep, with the increasing use of screens.
To better understand what happens after the lights go out, researchers used wrist-worn accelerometers to track the sleep times of the children, how long they took to fall asleep, the number of times they woke up, and the time they spent sleeping.
Parents filled out questionnaires and kept daily sleep diaries to compare their perceptions with the reality of their children’s sleep.
Required and actual sleep hours
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children aged 6 to 12 should get between 9 and 12 hours of sleep per night.
Data from the accelerometers showed that on average, children were actually getting only 8 hours and 20 minutes of sleep. However, parents reported that their children slept for more than 9 and a half hours.
By analyzing the data, researchers found that this gap was due to the time that parents did not account for. Children were awake for over 38 minutes on average each night, while parents reported their children woke up for less than 5 minutes.
