I am looking for information on Learning Disabilities and children with Sleep Apnea.  

I have an 8 year old that has been on a c-pap for over a year and a half.  The child is now in second grade.  He has been recently diagnosed with a Reading Disability and also Inattention.  

I am wondering if the Inattention and Reading Disability can be caused by the Sleep Apnea.  I guess I just thought that since he has been on the C-PAP he was "fine".  (He was diagnosed with both Central and Obstructive Sleep Apnea.)  Could it be that the Central Apneas are causing the Learning Disabilities.  Everything that I have found talks about Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Learning Disabilities.  

He is scheduled to go to a Neurologist in Philadelphia.  His home neurologist suggested we take him there to a Pediatric Neurologist.

   This hurts!


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Wishing for a good night's sleep.

Thank you!

My 14 yr old son was diagnosed as ADHD at age 3 and this past March with mild sleep apnea.  His apnes occur during REM sleep.a  Years later he was diagnosed with learning disabilities as his school performance and tests are 50% of his IQ.  I think they said he functions about 2 grades behind.  His IQ has tested from 124 to 112.

He repeated 7th grade and is starting 9th grade.  Until 8th grade he was in a self contained sp ed class.  He started mainstreaming last year in all but Math and Social Studies.  He failed Math in the self-contained class.

We have seen psychiatrists, neurologists, Pulmonologist - sleep Dr., counselors, etc.  I find it very difficult to get a straight answer from Dr's. regarding what disease is causing what symptoms.  To complicate things a year ago April he got Mononucleosis which symptoms of extreme fatique lasted to Jan 06.  A pediatric infectous control Dr. is who referred my son for a sleep study resulting in the sleep apnea DX.

The hardest part of parenting a child with thses issues is his body changes (puberty, growth) and the testing and meeting with various types of Dr's is never ending.  The up side is with lots of professional help my son is more successful in his life than I ever imagined when he was younger.  School is important, but in these changing times a college degree doesn't quarantee someone success in life.  Whatever my son does in the future his personality will make him a success.

My 11 yo daughter has had problems in school since 1st grade.  During 2nd grade we had a psycological evaluation done and it came up average.  Her difficulties in school got worse.  Third grade was a nightmare for everyone, especially for her.   Because she is so bright we all thought that we were dealing with an extremely stubborn kid.  Fourth grade she was fortunate enough to have a teacher with a special education background who called us in during the first month to tell us she was sure our daughter had some real disabilities.  The school tested her and came up with a learning disability in mathmatics.  They didn't test her for dysgraphia, but that would have been one that showed her as having.  We found a neuropsycologist who; after many, many hours of testing, diagnosed her with a frontal lobe processing problem.  She has an I.Q. of 114.  Her first instruction was for us to get a sleep study and sure enough she came up with sleep apnea.  The doc thinks that there has been some permenant "changes" to the brain as a result of the sleep apnea.  From the books I've read and people that I've talked to about sleep apnea and learning disabilites I'm convinced that sleep apnea is the root of our daughters problems.  Now the cure; sleep studies, T&A surgery, cpap is overwhelming to us right now.  Good luck and I look forward to reading more on this subject.