An individualized and comprehensive approach to treating sleep problems in young children.
Tailored ABA sleep packages—schedule tweaks, bedroom redesign, extinction of sleep dependencies, and function-based behavior plans—can quickly fix severe sleep issues in toddlers.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Magaña et al. (2013) worked with three toddlers who had autism and bad sleep. Each child got a full ABA sleep check first. Then the team built a custom plan that fit that child’s own sleep cues.
Parents ran the plans at home. The study used a multiple-baseline design to show that sleep only got better after the plan started.
What they found
All three kids fell asleep faster, woke less at night, and slept longer total hours. Gains were large and showed up quickly once the custom plan began.
How this fits with other research
McLay et al. (2021) later tested the same idea on 41 autistic kids and teens. Their case series also found big sleep gains, showing the toddler results hold up across more ages.
Sirao et al. (2026) looked at many sleep treatments and ranked physical activity as the top choice, with behavioral plans third. This seems to clash with Sandy et al., but Li’s review mixed many study types. The toddler ABA package still gives the fastest relief for severe night waking at home.
Luiselli (2021) sums up the whole ABA sleep field and lists the same tools Sandy used: bedtime fading, extinction, and bedroom changes. The 2013 paper is one of the clear examples Luiselli points to.
Why it matters
You can copy this roadmap today: run a quick sleep assessment, pick one or two maintaining factors, and train parents to stick with the plan. Kids as young as two can gain hours of extra sleep within a week, which cuts daytime problem behavior and parent stress.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Ask parents to log exact bed, wake, and cry times for three nights, then pick one antecedent change (earlier bedtime or faded light) to start this week.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
We evaluated the effects of assessment-based interventions on the treatment of sleep problems in 3 young children, 2 of whom had been diagnosed with autism. We used sleep diaries and infrared nighttime video in the child's bedroom to obtain measures of sleep onset, sleep-interfering behaviors, night waking, total sleep, parental presence, and medication administration each night. We then identified environmental factors that contributed to sleep problems using an open-ended interview called the Sleep Assessment and Treatment Tool. Individualized treatment packages were designed with the children's parents based on the idiosyncratic results of the assessment. Treatment packages included adjustment of the sleep schedule based on developmental norms and current sleep phases, design of a sleep-conducive environment, elimination of inappropriate sleep dependencies, and function-based interventions to decrease sleep-interfering behaviors by disrupting the contingency between the interfering behavior and its likely reinforcement. A nonconcurrent multiple baseline design across subjects revealed that treatment was effective for all 3 children. In addition, social acceptability measures showed that the parents were satisfied with the assessment process, the treatment, and the amount of behavior change.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 2013 · doi:10.1002/jaba.16