World Sleep Day is March 15th!
World Sleep Day is a day dedicated to spreading awareness about the importance of sleep health around the world. For parents of young children, sleep health is often a topic of considerable importance. And for parents of young autistic children, this topic can be uniquely significant.
Sleep challenges have been commonly reported by parents and caregivers of autistic children. Some surveys of parents suggest that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may get less sleep or have lower sleep quality than same-age children without autism (e.g., Hodge et al., 2014; Miano et al., 2007; Veatch et al., 2015). For children without autism, challenges with sleep can often improve with age; however, for autistic children, sleep difficulties may persist throughout their childhood (e.g., Hodge et al., 2014).
This is the first post in our upcoming Sleepy Time series where we’ll be sharing helpful parent resources and information about common behavioral sleep challenges, steps for improving sleep hygiene, some behavioral sleep intervention strategies, and bedtime and sleep tools for parents to try. Stay tuned for our Navigating Autism Parent Workshop in June on the topic: Bedtime Blues: Understanding & Overcoming Bedtime Resistance & Sleep Challenges. Register here!
References
- Hodge, D., Carollo, T. M., Lewin, M., Hoffman, C. D., & Sweeney, D. P. (2014). Sleep patterns in children with and without autism spectrum disorders: Developmental comparisons. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 35(7), 1631-1638. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2014.03.037
- Miano, S., Bruni, O., Elia, M., Trovato, A., Smerieri, A., Verrillo, E., Roccella, M., Terzano, M. G., & Ferri, R. (2007). Sleep in children with autistic spectrum disorder: A questionnaire and polysomnographic study. Sleep Medicine, 9(1), 64-70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2007.01.014
- Veatch, O. J., Reynolds, A., Katz, T., Weiss, S. K., Loh, A., Wang, L., & Malow, B. A. (2015). Sleep in children with autism spectrum disorders: How are measures of parent report and actigraphy related and affected by sleep education? Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 14(6), 665-676. https://doi.org/10.1080/15402002.2015.1065408
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