Sleep issues and being youngest in their class can lead to ADHD-like symptoms for kindergarteners
I’m the parent of two school-age boys, and behavior and sleep are consistently two of the biggest challenges I face with them. Last summer, I was preparing to have my oldest son, who turns 5 in July, begin Kindergarten. He’s small for his age, and was the youngest in his kindergarten class. We had also recently moved to a new area, and he didn’t know anybody. Needless to say, we experienced some behavioral problems, including regression in a number of areas including potty training. I withdrew him after two weeks and put him in preschool for an extra year.
While this helped, it took a long time to overcome the behavioral problems. Almost all of the research my wife and I did said these symptoms were from ADHD. But I wasn’t convinced. I certainly didn’t want to go to a doctor and just ask for medication, which I felt my son did not need.
Finally, I came upon an article from Science Daily on the link between kids’ sleep and behavioral problems. My son’s symptoms matched those from the study almost perfectly. It was an easy decision to try to get him to sleep more, rather than start him on medication. Instead of going to bed at 8pm, my wife and I had him go to sleep at 7pm. The difference was drastic. Although getting more sleep did not solve all of the problems, it solved enough of them so we could work through the other problems.
Now, a new article just published today by Science Daily suggests that nearly a million US children are misdiagnosed with ADHD because they are the youngest in their class. This hits so close to home. If I had taken my son to the doctor, it is likely he would have gotten an ADHD diagnosis, when the cause was actually the compounded problems of not enough sleep and the simple fact that he was the youngest in his class.
ADHD and ADD are serious conditions. However, as time goes on we learn that many symptoms that a teacher may identify as caused by these disorders are in fact related to sleep issues, normal differences in child development, and I’m sure by other factors yet to be discovered. I do not question that my decision to my son an extra year of preschool was the right one for him. But I do worry for other parents who do not know the other potential causes of behavioral problems and put their child on strong behavior-modifying drugs without trying to see if more sleep or the child’s age are a factor.
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