Sleep in children with epilepsy: the role of maternal knowledge of childhood sleep.

Study Objectives: To examine maternal knowledge of childhood sleep and its relation to sleep quantity, quality, and variability in a clinic sample of mothers of toddlers and preschool-age children with epilepsy.

Methods: A total of 112 epileptic children wore a wrist actigraphy to objectively assess daily sleep duration and its variability across 7 days. Mothers completed the Parents' Sleep Knowledge Inventory and Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ). Multivariate linear regression models were performed to predict CSHQ sleep disturbance scores, daily sleep duration, and daily sleep duration variability in children with epilepsy.

Results: On average, mothers answered 30.5 per cent of the questions correctly about normal childhood sleep patterns. Only six (5.3%) of the mothers answered half or more of the questions correctly. Mothers more frequently answered "don't know" to questions about dreams, symptoms of sleep-disordered breathing, and adequate amounts of sleep required by children and adolescents. After adjusting for the child's age, gender, bed-sharing, and relevant clinical and epilepsy variables, poorer maternal sleep knowledge was the independent predictor of higher CSHQ sleep disturbance scores and greater intraindividual variability of daily sleep duration in epileptic children (p < 0.05).

Conclusions: Maternal knowledge about childhood sleep is inadequate and decreased maternal sleep knowledge is associated with poorer and more variable sleep in children with epilepsy. Findings from this study document the need to provide parental education about childhood sleep, particularly emphasizing the recommended sleep duration for children across different developmental stages and addressing the symptoms of sleep disorders commonly comorbid with epilepsy.

Trial registration: This trial has been registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov (trial name: Sleep Intervention for Pediatric Epilepsy; registration number: NCT02514291).