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Sleep in Children with Neurodevelopmental Disabilities pp 305–318Cite as

Behavioral Sleep Interventions

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Abstract

Many children and adolescents with neurodevelopmental disabilities (NDD) have problematic sleep, including delayed sleep initiation, poor sleep maintenance, sleep-onset association disorder, early morning awakenings, or difficulty waking. Disrupted sleep can negatively impact a child’s behavior, attention, alertness, and overall functioning. The importance of good sleep, including in children with NDD, has gained more attention and led to increased efforts to identify effective treatments for sleep problems. This chapter describes behavioral interventions that can be used to treat a wide variety of sleep concerns, with a particular emphasis on interventions used to target difficulty initiating sleep, difficulty maintaining sleep, and difficulty waking. A case example illustrates the real-world application of many of the described strategies. Additional guidelines provide behavioral sleep recommendations for children with NDD and a brief discussion of the need for additional empirical research on the effectiveness of behavioral sleep interventions for children with NDD.

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Abbreviations

ADHD:

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

ASD:

Autism spectrum disorder

NDD:

Neurodevelopmental disability/disabilities

REM:

Rapid eye movement

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Valerie Paasch & Ximena Celedon Flanders

  2. Department of Behavioral Psychology, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Valerie Paasch, Ximena Celedon Flanders & Keith J. Slifer

  3. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Keith J. Slifer

Authors
  1. Valerie Paasch
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  2. Ximena Celedon Flanders
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  3. Keith J. Slifer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Valerie Paasch .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Pediatrics and Neurology, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, Richmond, VA, USA

    Jennifer A. Accardo

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Paasch, V., Flanders, X.C., Slifer, K.J. (2019). Behavioral Sleep Interventions. In: Accardo, J. (eds) Sleep in Children with Neurodevelopmental Disabilities. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98414-8_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98414-8_28

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-98412-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-98414-8

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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