Child routines moderate a brief behavioral intervention to enhance sleep in school-aged children.

Objective: To examine whether child routines (the consistency or variation in children's daily routines, household responsibilities, discipline routines, and homework routines) moderated the effectiveness of a brief behavioral intervention to enhance sleep in school-aged children.

Methods: Secondary analysis was conducted with a subset of 66 families with short sleeping (≤9.5 hr/day) children, 8-11 years old (female = 68%; mean age = 9.76, SD = 1.02) who completed the Child Routines Inventory at baseline and were then randomized to receive a behavioral sleep intervention (n = 32) or to control (n = 34). Sleep period was objectively measured using wrist actigraphy at baseline and 2 months post-randomization. Moderation analysis was performed using ordinary least squares regression using the PROCESS macro for SPSS.

Results: Controlling for sleep period at baseline, treatment condition was significantly related to the sleep period at 2 months post-randomization, with the intervention group achieving a longer sleep period compared to the usual sleep period group (control) (b = 46.30, p < .01). Intervention response was moderated by child routines (b = 1.43, p < .05). Specifically, the intervention produced the greatest change in sleep period for children who engaged in greater routine behaviors at baseline than those who engaged in fewer routine behaviors.

Conclusions: Families that engage in routine behaviors may be better equipped to adopt the behavioral modifications required to get a good night's sleep. The findings highlight the importance of working with families to establish routine behaviors to improve responses to behavioral sleep interventions.