Effect of Maternal Sleep on Parenting of Adolescents

Mothers who have trouble sleeping may engage in more permissive parenting, that is parenting marked by lenient or liberal discipline.

Poor sleep habits make parents lenient or liberal discipline towards kids, found study.

"We found that when mothers were not receiving enough sleep, or receiving poor quality sleep, it had an effect on their levels of permissiveness with their adolescents," said Kelly Tu from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the US.

About Sleep Disturbances
The physical, emotional and hormonal changes that occur in women during puberty, menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause can cause Sleep Disturbances

‘Lenient parenting, especially during the adolescent years, may increase the risk of problematic or risky behaviour among children including affiliation with deviant peers, engaging in delinquent behaviour, or substance use and abuse.’

"It may be that they're more irritable, experiencing impaired attention, or so over-tired that they are less consistent in their parenting. But on the plus side, we also find that mothers who are receiving adequate sleep are less likely to be permissive with their adolescents," she added.

The study is published in the Journal of Sleep Research.

Tu explained that during adolescence -- 11 to 18 years of age -- parental involvement is an important factor regarding how well their kids are adjusting socially, emotionally and behaviourally.

What Does A Child Feel About Discipline Techniques?
For a 4-year-old, punishing the entire class for making noise is fair while older children and adults do not feel so.

"Given that permissive parenting may heighten the risk of adolescents' risky behaviours, we wanted to take a step back to ask what's driving these permissive parenting behaviours, and to see if sleep could be a contributing factor," Tu said.

In order to examine maternal sleep duration and quality, the study included 234 mothers who were asked to wear actigraphs -- a wristwatch-like device -- for seven consecutive nights which tracked their movements at night and determined whether there was a disruption in sleep.

Do Not Use Harsh Physical Punishment to Discipline Your Child
Parents would do good to not resort to “harsh physical punishment to discipline their child as it results in health problems in adulthood.

Simultaneously, the adolescent children of the participants of an average age of 15 years completed questionnaires about how they perceived their mothers' parenting.

The results showed that mothers who had a longer duration of sleep or who were able to fall asleep easily, had adolescents who reported lower levels of permissive parenting.

Sleeping Disorders
How many times have you stayed awake in the dead of the night counting sheep? If it is fairly often then you could be suffering from a sleep disorder!

The study is significant as it points out the need for self-care and the importance of sleep, according to Tu.

Source-IANS