Sleep Problems and Autistic Children

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Children often have problems falling asleep and staying asleep throughout the night. This often causes strain on the parents and the children. Sleep patterns are also positively correlated with other behavior problems that are commonly addressed by behavior analysts, such as self injury, noncompliance, aggression, tantrums, and impulsivity (Stores & Wiggs, 1996; Bailey, Stevenson & Zuckerman, 1987). The goal of this study was to evaluate the effects of assessment-based interventions on the treatment of sleep problems in three young children, two of whom had been diagnosed with autism. Various tools including sleep diaries and infrared nighttime video to obtain measures of sleep onset, sleep-interfering behaviors, night walking, total sleep, parental presence, and medication administration each night. Families were recruited by flyers posted at local child care facilities and pediatrician offices. Three families were chosen who had indicated that the sleep problems, that were stressful and disruptive to their family life, had persisted for years. Two of the participants were diagnosed with ASD while the third was just experiencing delayed sleep onset. After a sufficient amount data was collected, each family was interviewed that was guided by the Sleep Assessment and Treatment Tool. The SATT is an open-ended functional assessment interview designed to identify specific sleep problems and the idiosyncratic environmental variables that contribute to each child's sleep problems in order to inform an individualized intervention that each family finds acceptable(Beaulieu, Hanley & Jin, p. 167, 2013). From the results of this assessment, individualized treatment packages were designed including adjustment of the sleep schedule based on developmental norms and current sleep phases, design of a sleep-conducive environment, elimination of inappropriate sleep dependencies, and

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