Sleep Apnea and LD

My son has both. But I’m not sure they are related. He has a very complex medical history. I have heard that some children diagnosed with ADD really have sleep apnea and that once the apnea is fixed (tonsillectomy or CPAP or BIPAP machine at night), the ADD behaviors go away. Enuresis is also often related to sleep apnea.

If your son snores or is chronically tired and hard to wake, he may well have sleep apnea. In order to diagnose it, he must have a sleep study at a reputable sleep disorder clinic. If he does not have enlarged tonsils or adenoids which would need to be removed, he will need to sleep with a bipap or cpap machine (www.sleepnet.com –I think that’s the correct web address—is a great resource).

I’m impressed that your doctor is screening for sleep apnea. I think he/she is in the minority!

Good luck.

Linda,yes bed-wetting is a problem.I don’t relish the idea of a child with sleep apnea, but it would explain some things.My son has had a study done and is being called back for a second night.Will keep you posted.

Dear Robin,
My son is 10 and in 4th grade. He was diagnosed two years ago with ADD. Last year he began having problems with reading comprehension and testing showed a receptive/espressive language based learning disability and APD. He also has problems with working memory, RAN and word retrieval.

He was a heavy snorer and bed wetter and was diagnosed at age 5 with sleep apnea (we actually noticed the apnea first). His was due to extremely enlarged adenoids. After a T&A, the apnea was cured. His bed-wetting, however, did not resolve until about 6 months ago. I have just recently started to wonder about the correlation between the LD and possibly permanent effects of the apnea which would have caused lack of oxygen to the brain for temporary periods over probably 2-3 years.

A speech language therapist/ audiologist who is a specialist in auditory processing disorder and learning disabilities that my son is seeing told me that one of the first questions she asks on initial evaluation is about snoring. She told me that she feels that sleep apnea especially effects working memory problems but that that clears up once the apnea is resolved. I am just not so sure about that.

Good luck to you. It seems that you have found a very thorough physician!
Sincerely, Eileen

I have one. We just had the T&A surgery. While I see a big change in my child, I can’t say that ending the apnea has solved all of the problems. I see better concentration and more willingness to try things that are challenging. My child has a much better mood and requires less sleep. Things are much better now, but not completely. I believe my child would have had areas of difficulty based on family history of LD.