Behavioral Parent Training to Address Sleep Disturbances in Young Children with ASD Therapist Guide

The Sleep Parent Training (SLePT) Program was developed for young children with autism spectrum disorder and co-occurring sleep disturbances and tested in clinical trials. The manual is based on behavioral analytic principles and covers approaches to address bedtime challenges, delayed sleep onset, night wakings, sleep association problems, and early morning wakings. The manualized intervention includes a therapist guide and an accompnying parent workbook. The therapist guide is designed to provide session by session guidance and to lead therapists from various backgrounds to help parents to improve their child's sleep concerns. The five session intervention covers an overview of the causes of sleep disturbances in autistic children as well as strategies to address the common behavioral sleep problems experienced by autistic children. This therapist guide includes therapist scripts, activity sheets, and treatment fidelity checklists. It also includes case examples, data collection forms, and a sleep behavior plan. The intervention is intended to be delivered individually, but may be delivered in-person or virtually, and ideas for virtual delivery are included. While manualized, the intervention is designed to allow for personalized tailoring based on the child's age and skills and parent preferences.

Cynthia Rheney Johnson PhD, Professor of Pediatrics, Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, is the director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Autism. Dr. Johnson has provided program development, clinical care and clinical supervision for youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) for 30 years. Additionally, she has conducted clinical research on the assessment and treatment of children with autism. She has been the principal investigator of several National Institute of Health and other federally funded grants. In addition to the work behind this work, she has had funding to test the efficacy of behavior analytic parent training in the treatment of disruptive behavior in young children with (ASD) and the treatment of feeding problems. She was a primary developer of the behavioral parent training intervention used in both the Research Unit in Pediatric Psychopharmacology (RUPP) and the Research Unit for Behavior Intervention (RUBI) consortiums. Dr. Johnson is a licensed psychologist and a board-certified behavior analyst.