title: Children's emotional security and sleep: longitudinal relations and directions of effects.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  We examined longitudinal relations between children's sleep and their emotional security in the mother-child, father-child, and parental marital relationships, with the goal of explicating the direction of association over time. Gender-related effects were also examined.
  
  
  METHODS
  Sleep duration was examined through actigraphy, and sleep quality was assessed via both actigraphy and self-reports. Children were in 3rd (T1) and 5th (T2) grades. The sample was composed of 78 boys and 98 girls at T1, and 62 boys and 80 girls at T2.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Security in the child-mother, child-father, and marital relationships at T1 were predictive of sleep problems two years later even after controlling for children's sleep at T1.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Collectively, results were more supportive of security predicting sleep parameters than the other direction of effects. Results highlight the important associations between family functioning and children's sleep, and extend the literature through the longitudinal design.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, USA. peggy.keller@uky.edu
authors.forename: Peggy
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Keller
authors.forename: Mona
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: El-Sheikh
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008393:Marriage / Q000523:psychology*; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012890:Sleep; D012931:Social Environment