Most children are not sleeping as much as their parents think

Tucking kids in isn’t the same as them actually sleeping – and most of us are overestimating how much shut-eye they get. 

That’s the blunt takeaway from a Brown University study that strapped activity trackers onto 102 elementary schoolers for a week and compared the data to what parents reported. 

Eighty-three percent of caregivers said their child was getting the right amount of rest. The sensors told a different story: only 14% of those kids hit national sleep targets.

“Parents don’t typically see how long it takes kids to settle, or how often they wake,” said Diana S. Grigsby-Toussaint, the study’s senior author and an associate professor at Brown’s School of Public Health. 

What happens between bedtime and sleep?

The team wanted to capture what really happens between “goodnight” and “good morning,” then see how closely parents’ estimates matched the truth.

If you’ve ever counted “lights out at 8:30” as “asleep by 8:30,” you’ve already spotted the problem. The American Academy of Pediatrics says 6- to 12-year-olds need 9 to 12 hours a night. 

The trackers showed the kids were averaging about 8 hours and 20 minutes of actual sleep. Meanwhile, parents reported more than 9½ hours. 

Where did that extra hour and change go? Into the fidgety, invisible in-between: kids were awake for a bit over 38 minutes a night on average, while parents guessed fewer than five. Those micro-awakenings are easy to miss and even easier to forget by breakfast, but they chip away at the nightly total.

The Brown team didn’t rely on vibes. They paired wrist-worn accelerometers – which log bedtimes, sleep onset, awakenings, and total sleep – with daily sleep diaries and parent surveys.

The devices aren’t perfect; they can mistake very still wakefulness for sleep. That means the “real sleep” estimates may actually be a touch generous. Even with that in mind, the gap held across the sample.

Looking at disparities

One part of the work you don’t see often in sleep research: a deliberate look at differences by race and ethnicity. 

More than half the participants were Latino, and the disparities were hard to miss. Latino children averaged just over eight hours a night; non-Latino children averaged about eight and a half. 

Only 4.4% of Latino kids met national guidelines, compared with 22.8% of non-Latino kids. Perceptions diverged, too. 

Latino caregivers were more likely to say sleep was a concern and to report trouble staying asleep. Non-Latino caregivers tended to underreport problems. Parents in both groups, though, routinely overestimated total sleep time.

Why the split? The study doesn’t try to pin it on a single cause, but it points to patterns that matter: later bedtimes, co-sleeping, and room sharing are more common in many Latino households and can shape both sleep itself and how parents perceive it.

Sleep deprivation among children

The researchers want to see future work dig deeper into how home environments, schedules, housing realities, and parenting practices play into children’s sleep across communities.

If you’re wondering how a child can be sleep deprived without seeming exhausted, you’re not alone. In school-age kids, sleep debt often shows up sideways: mood swings, tougher mornings, shakier attention, slower learning, more colds. 

If mornings aren’t an epic battle, it’s easy to assume sleep is fine. But add a late sleep onset, several brief awakenings, and a weekend bedtime that drifts by an hour or two, and you’ve quietly lopped off the equivalent of a full night’s sleep by the end of the week.

Helping your child get more sleep

The fixes aren’t flashy, and you’ve probably heard them before. They persist because they work. Keep bed and wake times consistent – even on weekends. 

Build a wind-down routine and dim the lights in the hour before bed; ease back on screens during that window. Make sure kids get daylight and physical activity, which help set their internal clock. Keep the room cool, dark, and quiet. 

If your child regularly takes a long time to fall asleep, snores loudly, wakes often, or seems unusually sleepy or irritable during the day, loop in a pediatrician. Common issues like insomnia, restless sleep, or sleep-disordered breathing can be identified and treated.

The study doesn’t wag a finger at parents. Modern family life stacks the deck against early bedtimes: homework and activities pull evenings later, commutes steal daylight, phones glow at all hours, and many families share rooms or juggle shift work.

The point isn’t blame; it’s calibration. If most of us are overcounting our kids’ sleep by an hour or more, we’re starting from the wrong number.

Rethinking bedtime and sleep

There’s also a broader picture here. The experts argue we need to talk differently about sleep with families, in and out of clinic settings, so we capture more than “what time did they go to bed?” 

That can be as simple as asking about bedtime routines and overnight awakenings at well-child visits, normalizing common struggles, and offering a couple of specific tweaks that fit the household’s realities. 

The takeaway? “Bedtime” doesn’t always mean “asleep.” A lot happens in between – and most kids in this study weren’t getting the 9–12 hours their bodies and brains need, even when it seemed like they were.

The good news is that small, steady changes stack up quickly. A slightly earlier wind-down, a consistent schedule, more daylight and movement – they don’t just make nights quieter. They make days better.

The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Pediatrics.

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