Published Online First

Background Excessive crying, sleeping or feeding problems are found in approximately 20 % of infants an d may predict behavioural problems in childhood. Methods A quantitative meta-analysis of 22 longi-tudinal studies from 1987 to 2006 that statistically tested the association between infant regulatory problems and childhood internalising, externalising and attention- defi cit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) prob-lems was carried out; 1935 children with regulatory problems were tested. Cohen’s d was used to express the association between regulatory problems and behavioural problems. Heterogeneity of the effect sizes was assessed using the I 2 statistic and meta-analysis of variance and meta-regressions were conducted to assess the infl uence of moderators. Rosenthal’s classic fail-safe N and correlation of sample sizes to effect sizes were used to assess publication bias. Results The weighted mean effect size for the main regulatory problems–behavioural problems association was 0.41 (95 % CI 0.28 to 0.54), indicating that children with previous regulatory problems have more behav-ioural problems than controls. Externalising and ADHD problems were the strongest outcome of any regulatory problem, indicated by the highest fail-safe N and lowest correlation of sample size to effect size. Meta-analyses of variance revealed no signifi cant moderating infl uences of regulatory problem comorbidity (I 2 =44.0, p>0.05), type (I 2 =41.8, p>0.05) or duration (I 2 =44.0, p>0.05). However, cumulative problems and clinical referral increased the risk of behavioural problems. Conclusions The meta-analyses suggest that children with previous regulatory problems have more behavioural problems than controls, particularly in multi-problem families. Further studies are required to assess the behavioural outcomes of previously sleep, feeding or multiply disturbed children