Sleep in Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders

In general, poor sleep is common in children with a neurodevelopmental disorder (Esbensen AJ, Schwichtenberg AJ. Sleep in neurodevelopmental disorders. Int Rev Res Dev Disabil. 2016;51:153-91. Schreck KA, Richdale AL. Sleep problems, behavior, and psychopathology in autism: inter-relationships across the lifespan. Curr Opin Psychol. 2020;34:105-11) and is related to additional difficulties for these children, such as increased daytime behaviour problems, poorer adaptive behaviour, and worsened academic functioning. Furthermore, sleep problems in children with neurodevelopmental disorders have a negative impact on families, particularly parents including increased parenting stress and poorer parent mental health(Cotton S, Richdale A. Brief report: parental descriptions of sleep problems in children with autism, Down syndrome, and Prader-Willi syndrome. Res Dev Disabil. 2006;27(2):151-61. Richdale AL, Baker EK. Sleep in individuals with an intellectual or developmental disability: recent research reports. Curr Dev Disord Rep. 2014;1(2):74-85. Martin CA, Papadopoulos N, Chellew T, Rinehart NJ, Sciberras E. Associations between parenting stress, parent mental health and child sleep problems for children with ADHD and ASD: systematic review. Res Dev Disabil. 2019;93:103463). This chapter examines sleep problems in the two most common neurodevelopmental disorders, Autism Spectrum Disorder (autism) and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Additionally, as examples of sleep difficulties that commonly co-occur in a range of genetically determined neurodevelopmental disorders associated with developmental delay and intellectual disability (ID), we describe sleep in the X-linked disorders (Fragile X syndrome [FXS] and Rett syndrome), and the chromosome 15 imprinting disorders (Prader-Willi syndrome [PWS] and Angelman syndrome [AS]).