Direct and Indirect Contributions of Child Temperament, Parenting Stress, and Bedtime Routines to Children’s Sleep Behaviors During the Covid-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

The current study examined the direct and indirect contributions of children’s temperament (reactivity, persistence, and rhythmicity), parenting stress, and bedtime routines to Turkish children’s sleep behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample was 313 mothers of children between 16 and 84 months (M = 52.42, SD = 12.36). Mothers reported their children’s sleep behaviours, children’s bedtime routines, parenting stress, and children’s temperament. Multivariate path analyses were run to test the direct and indirect effects. Results indicated that parenting stress was negatively related to children’s sleep behaviours. Further, it was found that consistency of bedtime routine environments was positively associated with children’s sleep behaviours. For the indirect associations, children’s temperament (rhythmicity and reactivity) was indirectly associated with children’s sleep behaviours via the consistency of bedtime routines. Findings underline the importance of child temperament, parenting stress, and bedtime routines for children’s sleep behaviours. The implications of the findings are discussed in light of previous research and the Bioecological model of human development in considering their functioning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• Children’s sleep behaviours
• temperament
• parenting stress
• bedtime routines

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author contributions

ÖB: data collection and writing and revision of the manuscript. İA: data analysis and editing of the manuscript. ÖB and İA: conceptualization

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request without breaching participant confidentiality.

Data and code availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed Consent Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17405629.2024.2315686

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.