Sleep Disorders As Another Risk Factor for Children with Disabilities

In this helpful article in Exceptional Children, Joseph Buckhalt (Auburn University) reports that children with ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, and intellectual disability have an especially high incidence of sleep disorders and atypical sleep patterns. “Children with disabilities for whom learning is challenging to begin with are made more vulnerable to problems in academic achievement when they sleep poorly,” he says. This stems from negative effects on attention, learning, memory, and cognitive functioning. 

Buckhalt believes three other factors can make these children’s sleep problems even more acute: asthma and obesity (which cause breathing problems that interrupt sleep) and low socioeconomic status (smaller homes with less noise insulation, lower-quality heating and ventilation, secondhand smoke, and less parental enforcement of bedtimes and caffeine intake). “What is clear is that any child with a disability who has one or more of these additional risk factors is especially likely to experience poor sleep,” says Buckhalt. 

What can educators do? For starters, children with disabilities should be screened for sleep disorders. A parent interview that’s easy for teachers to administer is the BEARS instrument (Owens and Dalzell, 2005). It includes these questions:

• Does your child have any problems at bedtime?
• Does your child have difficulty waking in the morning, seem sleepy during the day, or take naps?
• Does your child wake up a lot at night? Any sleepwalking or nightmares?
• What time does your child go to bed and get up on school days? Weekends?
• Does your child snore?

If responses suggest that a child is suffering from a sleep disorder, the parents should be encouraged to contact a sleep specialist (the American Academy of Sleep Medicine www.aasmnet.org and the National Sleep Foundation www.sleepfoundation.org have information on centers in every state). For children with less-severe sleep problems, there are several things schools can do:

• Counsel parents on the importance of consistent bedtimes, cutting out caffeine in the afternoon and evening, limiting screen time close to bedtime (the light from computers and TVs delays the onset of melatonin production), and dealing with allergies (clean bedding and not sleeping with pets).

• Schedule important academic tests later in the school day.

• Start school later in the morning. This is helpful for all students and especially for children with disabilities who have sleep problems.

“Just as we learned decades ago that hungry children do not learn well,” concludes Buckhalt, “it stands to reason that sleepy children are not optimally responsive to educational intervention, no matter how qualified the teacher and no matter how much empirical support exists for the teaching method or curriculum. Screening for sleep disorders and sleep insufficiency should perhaps become as routine as screening for vision and hearing problems before developing diagnosis and remediation plans.” 

“Sleep and Cognitive Functioning in Children with Disabilities” by Joseph Buckhalt in Exceptional Children, Summer 2013 (Vol. 79, #4, p. 391-405), 

http://en.zl50.com/12013061828723781.html 

From the Marshall Memo #491