ISSN 1188-3936 Vol. 16 - No. 4 Winter 2005 CLINICAL BULLETIN of the DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES DIVISION Parental Perception of Sleep Problems in Children of Normal Intelligence with Pervasive Developmental Disorders: Prevalence, Severity and Pattern Jennifer L. Couturier, M.D., M.Sc., Kathy N. Speechley, Ph.D., Margaret Steele, M.D., Ross Norman, Ph.D., Bernadette Stringer, Ph.D., & Rob Nicolson, M.D. First printed in full in The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 2005;44:815-822. Sleep problems in children can be defined as sleep behavior that is disturbing to the child, the child’s family, or both. These behaviors might include long sleep latency, night waking, nightmares, night terrors, sleepwalking, and co-sleeping with parents, which some, but not all, parents and children may find disturbing. Sleep problems may be divided into two categories: dyssomnias and parasomnias. The dyssomnias include difficulties with the timing of sleep whereas the parasomnias include nightmares/ terrors, and sleepwalking. In children with Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD), the prevalence of sleep problems has been reported to be between 44% and 83%. In terms of sleep pattern, studies have generally reported problems with sleep onset and maintenance. Poor quality of sleep, early waking, and difficult sleep routines have also been found. One group reported that children with autistic disorder exhibited long sleep latencies, night waking, and shortened night sleep, while another group found more difficulties with bedtime resistance, sleep onset delay, sleep duration, sleep anxiety, night waking and parasomnias (a disruptive physical act that occurs during slumber) in those PDD children who were thought to have a sleep problem by their parent. Studies done to date suggest that sleep problems may be quite prevalent in children with PDD. However, valid and reliable scales have not been used to measure prevalence of sleep problems in this population. Similarly, previous studies have