05/26/2026
The College of Education has scheduled the final oral examination of Joey Lam for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in School Psychology. The title of the dissertation is: "Associations between Parenting Strategies and Sleep in Young Children with ADHD: Follow-up Effects of Behavioral Parent Training."
Young children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often experience co-occurring sleep difficulties, such as bedtime resistance, difficulty initiating and maintaining sleep, and excessive daytime sleepiness. Parents play an important role in child bedtime behavior, making parenting strategies a viable avenue to target to improve sleep. Behavioral parent training (BPT), which provides parents with tools to effectively manage challenging behaviors and promote positive parent-child interaction, is considered the first-line treatment for young children with ADHD.
Studies on sleep-focused BPT have demonstrated improved sleep outcomes among school-aged children with ADHD; however, little is known about whether general BPT (i.e., focused on ADHD-related behaviors) may also yield sleep benefits in preschoolers with ADHD. The present study examined the longitudinal associations among parenting strategies, BPT, and sleep functioning in preschoolers with ADHD. Data were collected as part of Project Promoting Engagement with ADHD Pre-Kindergarteners (PEAK), a randomized controlled trial of a BPT program. Participants included 110 and 77 caregivers of 3- to 5-year-olds with ADHD who completed the Children’s Sleep Wake Scale–Going to Bed subscale (CSWS-GTB) and Children’s Sleep Habit Questionnaire–Toddler (CSHQ-T), respectively.
A series of mediation and moderated mediation analyses were conducted. Changes in parenting strategies at post-treatment assessment fully mediated the relationship between parenting strategies at pre-treatment assessment and sleep outcomes at 6-month follow-up. Intervention group assignment, however, was not a significant moderator; thus, moderated mediation was not supported. Nonetheless, families who received BPT reported significantly higher levels of adaptive parenting strategies than those in the waitlist control group at post-treatment. Findings highlight adaptive parenting strategies as a modifiable factor for improving sleep functioning in young children with ADHD. Results also suggest the potential value of incorporating more targeted, sleep-specific components into BPT programs to more effectively address sleep difficulties in this population.
