Early Childhood Sleep Difficulties and Middle Childhood Internalizing and Externalizing Psychopathology Among Children with Histories of Early Adversity
Date
2024-08-12
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
International Journal on Child Maltreatment
Abstract
Children who have experienced adversity, including abuse and neglect, are at elevated risk for both sleep problems and psychopathology. Sleep disturbance may be one pathway by which early adversity confers risk for psychopathology. Previous studies with such children have found associations between sleep difficulties and internalizing and externalizing problems in early childhood, and between sleep and externalizing problems in middle childhood. Here, we sought to examine the links between early childhood sleep difficulties and middle childhood internalizing and externalizing psychopathology in children with histories of early adversity followed longitudinally. Participants were 153 children (44% female) enrolled in a randomized controlled trial of an early childhood parenting intervention following involvement with child protective services. Caregivers reported on children’s sleep difficulties at ages 2, 3, and 4 and children’s internalizing and externalizing problems at ages 8, 9, and 10. Using a structural equation modeling approach, we found that mean levels of early childhood sleep difficulties were significantly and positively associated with internalizing, β = .449, p = .010, 95% CI [.106, .792], but not with externalizing, β = .229, p = .137, 95% CI [-.072, .529], problems in middle childhood, controlling for sex, age 4 psychopathology, and caregiver depression. Findings extend prior work demonstrating associations between sleep problems and psychopathology among children with histories of early adversity. More research is needed to elucidate the potential role of sleep difficulties in the development of internalizing problems in this population.
Description
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Keywords
Child Protective Services, child maltreatment, sleep, internalizing, externalizing
Citation
Lee, A.H., Bernard, K. & Dozier, M. Early Childhood Sleep Difficulties and Middle Childhood Internalizing and Externalizing Psychopathology Among Children with Histories of Early Adversity. Int. Journal on Child Malt. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42448-024-00211-1