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This cross-sectional study examined sleep disturbance associations between parents and their school-age children with overweight and obesity. A 7-day wrist-worn actigraph recording was performed on 246 children aged 6-9 years with overweight and obesity recruited from 10 public elementary schools in Taipei, Taiwan. Children's sleep disturbance was assessed using the Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire. Parental subjective sleep quality was assessed using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, with parental depressive symptoms measured using the Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale. General linear models were used to examine sleep disturbance associations within parent-child dyads. The results showed that 208 (84.6%) children had a clinically significant sleep disturbance score, and 123 (50%) parents had poor sleep quality. Higher children's sleep disturbance scores significantly predicted poorer parental sleep quality (b = 0.11, p < 0.001). Poorer parental sleep quality was associated with more severe sleep disturbances in children (b = 0.46, p < 0.001). This association was independent of children's actigraphic sleep (all p > 0.05) and was not attenuated by adjustment for parental depressive symptoms (b = 0.14, p < 0.001). Findings from our study suggest that sleep disturbances occur in both parents and their school-age children with overweight and obesity, with a significant bidirectional association between the two. Nurses and healthcare professionals should proactively assess and screen for sleep disturbances in parent-child dyads of children with overweight and obesity. Future studies should develop family-based sleep interventions and evaluate their effects on the sleep, health, and well-being of children with overweight and obesity and their parents., (© 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

This randomized controlled trial was conducted to assess the effectiveness of a family-based and mobile-assisted lifestyle intervention in reducing weight gain among school-age children with overweight and obesity. A total of 164 school-age children with overweight or obesity and their parents were randomized to the treatment intervention (n = 82) or an attention-control group (n = 82). The treatment intervention included three face-to-face education sessions, augmented by monthly text messages sent to parents on their mobile devices. The primary outcome was child BMI-for-age z-score. Secondary outcomes included child BMI, percent body fat, and actigraphy-assessed sleep as well as parental sleep quality. Outcomes were assessed at baseline, 3, 6, and 12 months after the intervention, with treatment effects analyzed using general linear models for repeated measures. Our results showed that children in the treatment intervention group had significantly lower BMI-for-age z score, BMI, and percent body fat than did those in the control group, with an adjusted mean difference of 0.31 units (95% CI: -0.59 to -0.03; p = 0.03), 1.34 kg/m ² (95% CI, -2.42 to -0.26; p = 0.01), and 3.12% (95% CI, -5.93 to -0.30; p = 0.03), respectively. No treatment effects were observed for child and parental sleep. Our findings suggest that family-based and mobile-assisted lifestyle intervention results in significant and sustained benefits to enhanced weight management for school-age children with overweight and obesity. Nurses planning and delivering childhood overweight and obesity treatment interventions should consider a family-based approach with the assistance of mobile devices., (© 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Adequate physical activity is associated with improved sleep in adults. Such associations, however, vary greatly across studies in pediatric populations, with no studies involving infants found in the literature. This prospective observational study was designed, therefore, to examine the association between physical activity and sleep patterns in infants. A total of 183 healthy infants aged 6 months wore an actigraph for 7 days to measure physical activity and sleep. Parents and caregivers completed a sleep-activity diary over the same period documenting the different types of infant activities. Daily mean time spent in screen-time-or-limited physical activity, including screen-based (e.g., watching television or other electronic devices) and non-screen based activity (e.g., quiet play or restricted infant movement when carried by caregivers or seated in high chairs, swings, or bouncer seats), was 6.68 hr (SD = 1.99), which represented 47.50% of daytime waking hours (SD = 13.73). We found that 65 (35.5%) infants engaged in some screen time during the study, with 10 (5.5%) infants having an average daily screen time >30 min. In our multivariate linear regression model, more hours of screen-time-or-limited physical activity per day were significantly associated with a decrease in total daily 24 hr sleep duration (p < 0.01). Findings from our study suggest that reducing screen-time-or-limited physical activity might be an approach for promoting adequate sleep and lengthening infant daily sleep duration., (© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)