Sleep is a blindspot in pediatric medicine.
let’s change that.
Make sleep a priority
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Sleep is essential for a child’s health, influencing every aspect of their development—from physical growth to emotional well-being. Yet, it remains an overlooked aspect of pediatric care, leaving critical gaps impacting children’s and families lives.
Unaddressed sleep challenges can lead to behavioural difficulties, aggravate chronic conditions, and reduce quality of life. By placing sleep health as one focus of pediatric care, we can intervene earlier, support recovery, and set children on a healthier path.
At ChildRight2Sleep (CR2S), we’re working to elevate the role of sleep in pediatrics and adolescent medicine. Our mission is to ensure sleep is recognized as a vital component of every child’s health.
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Sleep is more than rest—it’s a powerful tool for preventing illness and promoting recovery. By integrating sleep health into child and adolescent care, we can improve outcomes across three levels:
Primary Prevention: Establishing healthy sleep habits to protect against future health challenges.
Secondary Prevention: Identifying and addressing sleep disorders early, such as insomnia or sleep apnea, to prevent complications such as ADHD-like behaviours, which are a typical symptom of sleep deprivation.
Tertiary Prevention: Enhancing quality of life for children with chronic conditions through improved sleep.
At CR2S, we are dedicated to embedding sleep into pediatric and adolescent healthcare to build healthier futures for children, families, and communities.
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Heinrich Hoffmann’s Fidgety Phillip (1845) poses a timeless question: why does Phillip fall with his chair? Could it be ADHD, Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS), sleep-disordered breathing, or even dynamics within his family?
This story highlights the complexity of pediatric health and the importance of considering all possibilities—including sleep. Too often, what we notice is shaped by our training and biases, leaving critical factors unexamined.
At CR2S, Phillip’s story reminds us to rethink how we approach care. Sleep health isn’t just a consideration—it’s a core element in diagnosing and managing conditions that affect children’s development and well-being.
Thank you for joining us at our 1st CR2S Conference in Vienna (May 4–6).
Sleep is a fundamental right of every child and a cornerstone of health and development. As part of the ChildRight2Sleep (CR2S) Initiative, we addressed this critical gap in pediatric and adolescent health and discussed how we can elevate sleep health to a central focus in clinical practice.
Our initiative united experts in pediatric and adolescent sleep medicine and psychology with families, practitioners, industry leaders, and policymakers. We reviewed evidence-based benchmarks and practical frameworks and now we aim to transform how sleep disorders are recognized, understood, and managed more than ever. We developed The Vienna Proposal on Children’s Right to Sleep and we are most thankful if you would like to share your comments/thoughts (version April 30, 2025; under public review until June 15, 2025). Together we can shift sleep health from being a blind spot to a protected right, creating lasting change for children and families.
