Purposeful Ramblings Through My Mind

http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200804115

The link is to a radio program about the connections between sleep deprivation and various behavioural disorders, including ADHD. I have no problem believing that there's a connection, and that in some cases, it's a causal connection; that is, the lack of sleep is causing the symptoms that are diagnosed as ADHD. I have at least one student right now who is not diagnosed ADHD, but definitely exhibits many of the behaviours associated with it. The student has access to three different video game systems in his bedroom, and plays them until all hours of the night. I know this because he comes to school the next day boasting about how late he stayed up. I'd be surprised if he's getting five hours of sleep a night on average, and according to standard pediatric wisdom, he needs about double that. Meanwhile, he's a smart kid who should be getting B's and instead is getting C's and D's. Furthermore, I've never known an ADHD student who slept well.

Now, for my questions: I would like to see a study done on a wide variety of kids, some of them with ADHD diagnoses already in place, to find out if the sleep deprivation is causal or not; I'd like to know if there may be times when ADHD is causing the sleep deprivation rather than the other way around, and how much of that is due to environmental factors (such as the presence of video games or TVs in a child's bedroom.) I know plenty of parents - indeed, I am one - who have trouble getting their kids into a sleep pattern that would fit the bill for "enough sleep," according to prevailing wisdom: that is, eleven to twelve hours for a child under five, ten to eleven hours for a child five to nine, and nine to ten hours from then until the late teens, when most kids will start to settle into an adult sleep pattern of seven to eight hours a night. Is establishing a sleep pattern early in life essential to our children's long-term mental and physical health? At what point do we seek medical help to get them to sleep more - assuming they're exhibiting symptoms of sleep deprivation?

I predict that this series of studies will revolutionize not just the treatment of ADHD and other chronic childhood disorders, but also parenting books. Until now, a lot of sleep problems have been met with: "Give it time, and it will likely sort itself out. If you're not willing to wait it out, try this." I'm wondering if that advice is going to change to: "If your child doesn't have a good sleep pattern by X date in their development, they are at substantially increased risk for X, Y, and Z disorders. Here are some suggestions that parents REALLY NEED TO FOLLOW to prevent that." (For the record, this research has been building up over the last five or ten years, which is not very long in medical terms; a lot of it has been driven by adults diagnosed with ADHD as children, who come in for sleep studies. When a sleep disorder is diagnosed, the adults often find that their ADHD symptoms clear up.)

Thanks catsarah for the link.