Join Me at an All-Day Workshop for Educators & Parents on December 5th

I’ll be conducting an all-day workshop for educators on Monday, December 5, 2011 at the Grappone Conference Center in Concord, New Hampshire. The event is sponsored by the University of New Hampshire Institute on Disability and is geared to regular and special education teachers, school psychologists and social workers, behavior specialists, occupational therapists, administrators, and parents.

Description:

Neurological disorders that emerge in childhood often have significant impact on students’ academic, behavioral, and social-emotional functioning. Participants will learn about the cardinal features of Tourette’s Syndrome, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Executive Dysfunction, Mood Disorders such as Depression and Bipolar Disorder, and the memory deficits, sensory issues and “storms” that sometimes accompany them. Strategies and assistive technology to accommodate symptom interference in activities such as handwriting, homework, math calculation, and written expression and big projects will be described. Pitfalls in behavioral interventions, and simple social skills and problem-solving interventions will also be identified.

For more information on the workshop and registration information, download the brochure or register online at www.iod.unh.edu.

Hope to see you there!

 

Kids who bully, have aggressive behaviors are twice as likely to have sleep problems

Children who are bullies or have conduct problems at school are more likely to be sleepy during the day according to University of Michigan Medical School researchers.

Researchers looked at elementary school students in the Ypsilanti, Michigan public schools who had exhibited conduct problems like bullying or discipline referrals and found that there was a two-fold higher risk for symptoms of sleep-disordered breathing, particularly daytime sleepiness among these students. The study was published last week in the journal Sleep Medicine.

“What this study does is raise the possibility that poor sleep, from whatever cause, can indeed play into bullying or other aggressive behaviors – a major problem that many schools are trying to address,” says Louise O’Brien, Ph.D., assistant professor in U-M’s Sleep Disorders Center and the departments of Neurology and Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery.

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Trouble waking up?

Ever have trouble waking your child up? You might relate to this:

Back to School Tip #2: Re-establish wake-up time and routines

One of the great things about summer is that the kids can sleep late. For some of us, that means a break from the morning hassles that started so many of our days. But if you think that you can get your child back into an appropriate sleep cycle if you start the weekend before school re-opens, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d love to sell you.

As soon as your child is back home from summer camp or wherever they’ve been off to, begin easing them back into a better sleep cycle for school. If your child hasn’t been away but has been in the habit of sleeping until oh, say, 10 am, 11 am, or the afternoon, you may have your work cut out for you. While some kids can readjust relatively quickly (within a week), for other kids, getting them back into the school routine takes much longer.

Start by doing the math to calculate the difference between their current wake-up time and the time they’ll need to wake up for school. If they currently wake up at 1 pm every day and you and your child figure out that they need to be up at 7 am so that they have time to dress, eat breakfast, brush their teeth and comb their hair and get to the bus or school on time, that’s a 6-hour difference to overcome. Some children may cooperate with getting back into the routine of getting up early, but if you are not one of the lucky parents, divide the difference you calculated by the number of days left until school starts. That’s how much you need to adjust the wake-up time by every day, beginning immediately, if you want to use a gradual approach instead of a “starting tomorrow, you get up at 7 am” approach.

Tips

1. The “standard” professional advice is to have a family meeting with your child to discuss what time they need to wake up for school and what time they will go to bed each night during the school week. Of course, many “standard” professionals have never tried to deal with our kids, many of whom have sleep issues galore. If your teen really gives you a rough time about going to bed earlier while it’s still vacation, you may want to go to Plan B: start by focusing on adjusting the wake-up time. For Plan B, you say to your child, “You can still go to sleep late if you want, but you need to be up at _______ one way or the other. If you get up on time, good things will happen. If you don’t get up on time, there will be consequences that you probably won’t like, including having to go to bed earlier.”

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Impact of Delaying School Start Time on Adolescent Sleep, Mood, and Behavior

Yet another study provides evidence that starting school later would benefit teenagers.   Here’s the abstract:

Judith A. Owens, MD, MPH; Katherine Belon, BA, Patricia Moss, PhD
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2010;164(7):608-614.

Objective To examine the impact of a 30-minute delay in school start time on adolescents’ sleep, mood, and behavior.

Design Participants completed the online retrospective Sleep Habits Survey before and after a change in school start time.

Setting An independent high school in Rhode Island.

Participants Students (n = 201) in grades 9 through 12.

Intervention Institution of a delay in school start time from 8 to 8:30 AM.

Main Outcome Measures Sleep patterns and behavior, daytime sleepiness, mood, data from the Health Center, and absences/tardies.

Results After the start time delay, mean school night sleep duration increased by 45 minutes, and average bedtime advanced by 18 minutes (95% confidence interval, 7-29 minutes [t₄₂₃ = 3.36; P < .001]); the percentage of students getting less than 7 hours of sleep decreased by 79.4%, and those reporting at least 8 hours of sleep increased from 16.4% to 54.7%. Students reported significantly more satisfaction with sleep and experienced improved motivation. Daytime sleepiness, fatigue, and depressed mood were all reduced. Most health-related variables, including Health Center visits for fatigue-related complaints, and class attendance also improved.

Conclusions A modest delay in school start time was associated with significant improvements in measures of adolescent alertness, mood, and health. The results of this study support the potential benefits of adjusting school schedules to adolescents’ sleep needs, circadian rhythm, and developmental stage.

A companion news story by the Associated Press discusses the general issue and why some districts have adopted later start times while others haven’t.

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