Its been quite a long time since I've blogged about Logan's struggles with behavior. There are so many avenues we've gone down thru these past years, searching for ways to help Logan appropriately express his anger. He's such an incredibly smart, athletic, funny, creative and amazing boy. He just continues to struggle with controlling behavioral impulses and emotions, particularly when things don't go his way.
Tonight we are going to explore another possible link to answers for him. I'm taking him for an overnight sleep study at a pediatric sleep clinic, not too far from where we live. I've been hearing and reading a lot that kids with behavioral challenges can have sleep disorders, without the parents even realizing it. And those sleep disorders prevent the kids from getting enough REM sleep, which in turn affects brain performance. Particulary in behavior and impulsivity and focus.
Its all very interesting. And, it makes sense.
I struggle with a sleep disorder myself and it surely affects my life in many ways. Logan never slept an entire night, alone in his bed, until he was more than 2 1/2 years old. I blogged about this quite a bit back in 2008, here, here, and here.
Yes, that was our life for 2 1/2 years. We were insanely out of our minds exhausted. The kind of exhausted where you think your brain it literally going to pound right out of your head, and you accidentally brush your teeth with Benadyl ointment.
We were at our wits end and scheduled a sleep study then, but were going tohave to travel to a hospital in Baltimore since he was still so small. Exasperated and not knowing what else to try, we tried one more thing. We moved his bed into Dylan's room at that point, and he finally began to sleep. Maybe he just didn't want to be alone. He would fall asleep at the beginning of the night quickly, but he would always, always wake up throughout the night and could not get back to sleep. Once he moved to Dylan's room, I cancelled the sleep study, thinking we solved the problem (I talk about this here).
He still had some night wakings here and there since that time, though that has also dissapated now that he's five. But who's to say the sleep he gets is quality? There must have been a reason he didn't sleep for those first 2 1/2 years, and all of the reasons you'd attribute (i.e. ear infections, G.I. issues, etc.) were not the case for him.
I first took Logan to our ENT so he could visually take a look in Logan's airway and see if anything looked enlarged. At a glance, his tonsils appear normal size. They aren't able to see adenoids without an x-ray, so that might come later. The doctor did say Logan's soft palate in his throat is enlongated. This could be a sign of possible apnea. We've heard Logan snore at night, another possible sign of apnea. And not only is there apnea, there are a whole other list of sleep disorders that can come into play and affect health and brain function as well. These things all led us to scheduling the sleep study. We've had to wait all summer, but tonight they'll record him for bout 9 hours and see if his sleep is getting interrupted throughout the night. We'll have results by August 18th, and will know if any next steps need to take place.
It may not lead us anywhere. And the answer to what makes Logan, well, Logan, may simply be that he is who he is. Physiologically, there may be no anwers. But what if there is something to this, and we can help him? What if.
We'll just have to see what we learn. This is a very non-invasive type of study tonight, and he thinks we're just having a 'sleepover' at the doctors offcie. He will probably never even remember we were there. I get to sleep in the same room with him, and we'll be home by 7 in the morning. Easy peesy. He loves going to any kind of doctors appointment, so I know it won't be a big deal to him at all.
We may or may not learn anything, but we had to at least try. I'll have an update once we have results later this month.
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