CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 91Sleep and related disordersSleep and Wakefulness ResearchChild and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development

IX. BEDTIME ROUTINES IN EARLY CHILDHOOD: PREVALENCE, CONSISTENCY, AND ASSOCIATIONS WITH NIGHTTIME SLEEP

Open access
Staples, Angela D, Bates, John E, Petersen, Isaac T·2015·Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development
DOI 10.1111/mono.12149PMC PMC4843998
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

The ability to transition from wakefulness to sleep is one of the most important tasks in the development of sleep during early childhood. Although establishing regular bedtime routines for children with sleep problems can be clinically effective in reducing the number of signaled night awakenings and increasing amount of sleep, it is unclear whether a regular bedtime routine would be associated with either the frequency of signaled night awakenings or nightly sleep minutes in a nonclinical sample of children. This study examined the role of a regular bedtime routine on the development of sleep regulation and consolidation in a community sample of young children. Adherence to a bedtime routine was concurrently associated with a greater amount of nightly sleep at 36 and 42 months. In addition, adherence to a bedtime routine predicted an increase in nightly sleep minutes over a 6-month period. Finally, this study demonstrated that adherence to a bedtime routine was particularly supportive of developmental gains for children of mothers who used consistent parenting practices during the day.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1111/mono.12149

Cites

20 of 20 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • In that study, children whose mothers reported more consistent daytime discipline and limit-setting and a more consistent bedtime routine had the largest gains in nighttime sleep duration from 30 to 36 months, about 1 hour.

    “Children whose mothers indicated more consistent self-reported daytime discipline and limit-setting practices and a more consistent bedtime routine had the largest gains in nighttime sleep duration between 30 and 36 mo, by about 1 h.”

    From Benefits of a bedtime routine in young children: Sleep, development, and beyond. (2018) · cites this paper as [50]

    The Discussion reports that children with more consistent parenting and bedtime routines had the strongest gains in nightly sleep from 30 to 36 months. The Results report that this group slept about one hour longer at 36 months than the other groups, controlling for sleep at 30 months; they do not establish that the group's sleep duration itself increased by one hour over that interval. Page numbers are unavailable in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.87)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • In that study, mother-reported child awakenings showed no association with bedtime routine adherence either concurrently or over time.

    “Concurrently and over time, mother-reported child awakenings were not associated with bedtime routine adherence.”

    From Benefits of a bedtime routine in young children: Sleep, development, and beyond. (2018) · cites this paper as [50]

  • A prospective study of 87 children found that more frequent weekly use of a bedtime routine correlated with longer nightly sleep at 36 and 42 months, but not at 30 months.

    “Greater weekly adherence to a bedtime routine was concurrently associated with increased nightly child sleep at 36 and 42 mo, but not at age 30 mo.”

    From Benefits of a bedtime routine in young children: Sleep, development, and beyond. (2018) · cites this paper as [50]

  • In the same study, higher adherence to a bedtime routine at 30 months predicted longer nighttime sleep from 30 to 36 months, but not from 36 to 42 months.

    “greater adherence to a bedtime routine at age 30 mo predicted an increase in nighttime sleep duration from 30 to 36 mo, although this pattern was not found for the period of time between 36 and 42 mo.”

    From Benefits of a bedtime routine in young children: Sleep, development, and beyond. (2018) · cites this paper as [50]

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

2 of the 22 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. Sadeh A Alster J Urbach D Lavie P 1989 Actigraphically based automatic bedtime sleep-wake scoring: Validity and clinical applications Journal of Ambulatory Monitoring 2 209 216
  2. Staples AD Bates JE 2013 Developmental science Wolfson A Montgomery-Downs H The Oxford Handbook of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Sleep and Behaviors 14 33 New York, NY Oxford University Press

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Staples, A. D., Bates, J. E., & Petersen, I. T.
Affiliations
  • University of Virginia (US)
  • Indiana University Bloomington (US)
Corresponding author
Staples, Angela D
ORCID
Venue
Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Published
2015-02-22
Volume
80
Issue
1
Pages
141-159
ISSN
  • 0037-976X (ISSN-L)
  • 1540-5834
DOI
10.1111/mono.12149
PMC
PMC4843998
OpenAlex
W1550350484
Cited by
91
References
22
Citations by year
2026: 7 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 1
FWCI
15.42
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • National Institute on Aging (R21AG041035)
  • Toddler Development Study (MH099437)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Sleep and related disorders
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Sleep and Wakefulness Research
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
Keywords
bedtime routines, early childhood sleep, sleep regulation, sleep consolidation, nocturnal awakenings, parenting practices, maternal care, sleep development
MeSH terms
Analysis of Variance, Child, Preschool, Female, Habits, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Male, Medical Records, Regression Analysis, Sleep, Sleep Wake Disorders, Time Factors, Wakefulness, Parenting, Actigraphy

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review