Child Eveningness as a Predictor of Parental Sleep.

Child eveningness has been associated with many adverse outcomes for children. The aim of this study was to assess whether child eveningness poses a risk to parental sleep quality in follow-up. A total of 146 children (57% adopted, 47% boys, mean age at follow-up 5.1 years [standard deviation 1.7]) completed a 1-week actigraph recording to analyze their sleep twice, 1 year apart. The parents completed the Child ChronoType Questionnaire for their child and a short version of the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire for themselves and the Jenkins Sleep Scale for their sleep quality. Linear regression analyses showed that subjective parental sleeping problems at baseline were associated with subjective parental sleeping problems at follow-up. A morning-type child decreased the risk of parental sleeping problems at the 1-year follow-up compared to the child evening chronotype. Additionally, the child intermediate chronotype decreased the risk of maternal sleeping problems at the 1-year follow-up compared to the evening chronotype of the child. Parents of evening-type children experienced more sleeping problems in the follow-up, compared to parents of morning-type children. This finding encourages parents and professionals to steer the diurnal rhythm of evening-type children toward an earlier daily routine.

Changes in objectively measured sleep among internationally adopted children in 1-year follow-up during the first years in new families.

Background: Psychosocial risks and environmental changes experienced by internationally adopted children may predict sleep problems, which are incidentally among the main concerns of adoptive parents. Several questionnaire studies have found sleep of internationally adopted children to be problematic, but none of those used an objective measure in a controlled study. Objective: To determine whether the objectively recorded sleep of internationally adopted children is worse than their controls who are living with their biological parents. Methods: To this case-control part of the Finnish Adoption Study, we recruited children who were adopted internationally to Finland between October 2012 and December 2016. Simultaneously, control children were recruited from 16 daycare centers. To assess sleep in children, actigraphy recordings were made twice, 1 year apart, between December 2013 and April 2018. In the adopted group, the first assessment took place 10 months after they had arrived in their families. The associations between adoption status and sleep parameters were analyzed using linear mixed modeling and adjusted for multiple potential confounders, including child age. Results: Seventy-eight internationally adopted children (boys 64%) aged 1-7 years and 99 controls (boys 53%) aged 2-6 years attended the first sleep recording. The recordings showed that the internationally adopted children slept longer (B = 0.48, 95% CI 0.23-0.73, P < 0.001) than the controls. There were no significant differences in sleep fragmentation or sleep efficiency between the groups. During the 1-year follow-up, the sleep patterns of the adopted children approached those of the controls. Conclusions: The internationally adopted children spent more time in bed and slept more than their control children in both recordings. However, their sleep patterns were not very different from those of their peers and the differences appeared to vanish during the first years in their new family.

Intestinal parasites may be associated with later behavioral problems in internationally adopted children.

AIM: At arrival in new home country, internationally adopted children often have intestinal parasites. International adoptees also exhibit more behavioral problems than their biological peers. We examined whether intestinal parasite infections in international adoptees on arrival in Finland are associated with their later behavioral and emotional problems. METHODS: Data for this study were sourced from the Finnish Adoption Study (FinAdo) based on parental questionnaires for all internationally adopted children under 18 years (n = 1450) who arrived in Finland from 1985 to 2007. A total of 1293 families provided sufficient information on the adoptee's background, parasitic status on arrival, and behavioral symptoms at the median time of 5 years after arrival (mean age = 7.8 years). Behavioral and emotional disorders were evaluated with the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Statistical analyses were conducted using linear regression. RESULTS: Of the 1293 families, parents of 206 adoptive children reported intestinal parasites in their adopted children on arrival. Parasite-infected children had subsequently higher CBCL problem scores than the children without parasites (p < 0.001). The association between intestinal parasites and later behavioral problems was stronger than that between intestinal parasites and any other factors measured in this study, except disability. LIMITATIONS: The control group was naturally provided by the adopted children without parasite infections, but we could not compare the adopted children to non-adopted children without a defined parasite infection. We were unable to specify the effects associated with a specific parasite type. It was not possible either to include multiple environmental factors that could have been associated with behavioral problems in the models, which indicated only modest explanatory values. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, intestinal parasite infections in early childhood may be associated with children's later psychological wellbeing, even in children who move to a country with a low prevalence of parasites. Our findings may support further developments pertaining to the gut-brain theory.