Researchers have discovered that even a moderate sleep deficit has a big affect on the neurobehavioral functioning of children who have ADHD. This appears to have a direct, and negative, impact on how kids with ADHD are able to function in school. The implication is that if extra efforts are made to ensure that the child gets enough sleep every night, that this will improve his or her school experience.
I think everyone knows what it feels like to have to go through a day after not getting enough sleep. This tends to make people feel lethargic, and unmotivated, and can make both adults and children cranky and unfocused. Usually, when people hear the phrase “sleep deficit”, it conjures up images of staying up all night tending to a sick child, or a night spent cramming for an exam in college. For most people, missing a little bit of sleep is not enough to completely throw off one’s day.
However, a study shows that children who have ADHD are negatively affected by what may sound like a small amount of sleep. This means that parents can help their child have a much better day at school if extra efforts are made to ensure that the child gets the right amount of sleep.
The study looked at 43 kids, 11 of which had ADHD, (which means that the remaining 32 were the control group). The average age of all the children was about nine years old. They monitored the children for about a week in order to determine how many hours of sleep the child usually got. For the next six nights, the researchers asked that the children get one hour less of sleep each night. To do this, they simply had the parents move their child’s bedtime back by one hour. They used a device called an actigraph, which resembles a wristwatch, in order to monitor the children’s sleep.
The results showed that even the loss of 55 minutes of sleep over six consecutive nights was enough to impact the neurobehavioral functioning of children who have ADHD. This means that staying up a little later because because dinner time got pushed back, to play on the computer a little longer, or even to finish homework, can add up to enough of a sleep deficit to cause problems. It is enough to cause a child with ADHD to have extreme difficulty in school. Getting enough sleep is a vital part of helping you child do well at school.
Image by Toshiyuki IMAI on Flickr