sleep! please help

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could some one please tell me how on earth you get an aspi child to go to sleep??
my middle daughter has just had her prosisional dia and is being sent for more testing and my so is awaiting his first appointment and they simply dont sleep my little girl crys and crys for hours if you send her to bed she wont sleep till she is exsausted and as a result its nearly 2am and im still awake and she is watching care bears you wouldnt belive she got up @ 7 this morning and will again in a few hours
thank you

one of the things that worked for my kids was telling them that they could read in bed. i would send them to bed with as many books as they wanted....they just had to lay down & stay in bed. ...my daughter also uses a night light . my oldest went through a period of time when he listened to music at bedtime, but this phase was very short lived.

I only have one word for you - melatonin. It has helped us the most with our 11 yr. old son who has always had trouble falling asleep. He is now homeschooled but when he was in school I think a lot of the trouble was his stress level was so high during the day he couldn't relax. We tried everything...a relaxing fountain on his dresser (it worked for a little while) letting him watch tv until he got sleepy (never happened),listening to music. All of these worked on a short term basis and then we tried melatonin - he was sleepy within 1/2 hr. of taking it. I could have cried when I saw his little face get drowsy and sleepy -it wasn't a look he had very often.

Also keeping the bedtime routine the same as much as humanly possible helped. My son is a big reader so we always make sure that he has "nighttime" books that he really loves and will read. Knowing he has some books he loves makes him look forward to getting in bed.

It was horrible when he was in school (we didn't discover melatonin until later) and he would still be up at 11:30 and he was in 1st grade and he had to get up at 6:30 -OMG I was a wreck -I don't know how he made it through the day on such little sleep.

You said your daughter cries when you send her to bed- have you figured out why? Can she tell you why she is crying? Is she relaxed BEFORE you put her in bed or do you just tell her "go to bed" - you didn't mention her age so if she's young she's going to need help.

GOod luck

This works very well for many Aspie children:

Melatonin for Sleep in Asperger's Children

It's a very safe to use, and available over the counter. There are chewable tablets, mint flavored, starting at 500mcg - Trader Joe's has them, and tablets go much higher, 3-5mgs (e.g., Walgreens). The study used 3 mgs/day. You might start with the lowest dosage, especially since it's chewable. Give the tablet about an hour before the time you want the child to sleep. (Works well for me, as an adult, too).

White noise and weighted blankets help many kids, as well.

melatonin in VERY, VERY SMALL DOESES! Like .3 milligrams.

wrap her up tightly in a blanket.

White noise like a fan on low or something.

No food before bed.

No caffeine or sugar after 4 PM (given a bedtime of 9 PM)

how's her daily physical activity? Does she go for walks, goes outside and plays? Anything strenuous is good but not right before bed.

No TV right before bed.

Mine never slept very well and I agree with ster (quote above) when very young would read to them and at times for an hour or so, but at least we both got to relax together and eventually as got older they continued doing this but read themselves. I found no point in trying to put them to bed to early so just use to have them up later than other children, and yes they were still always up early. Try not to listen to NT parents, but just do what works best for you and your family.

Never wanted to medicate my children, so never did as feel children have a right and I know I would never of wanted to be given medication at such a young age myself.

I don't have a solution I just wanted to say that I didn't know this was an aspergian trait.

I used to have problems falling asleep. I would hide a flashlight in my pillow and read until i was so exhausted I just passed out.

I never had issues waking up until i got into high school.

The Trader Joe's chewable melatonin is 500mcg - micrograms, not milligrams. One microgram is one-millionth of a gram.
500mcg = .5mg.
Melatonin is a natural hormone associated with normal sleep, and this synthetic form in this dosage is safe for children. It doesn't work for all kids.

bed time is boring and its very scary are the only answers i get.i bought her a bed tent to help her want to stay in bed but it was only temp.and yes she is relaxed bcoz we hove a hour of down time befor bed time. i tryed bathing her b4 bed but she is afraid of baths so that didnt work.
the prob with reading is i have mild dyslexia and the only thing i cant do is read aloud very well even though i can read novals in a matter of mins reading aloud is a big prob for me
at the moment we sing our going up the stairs song then i tuck her in bed then she goes through her list (things she didnt do that she's not suposed to do (like cut her hair bite people put our shoes on the right feet and so on) she will only ware her shoes on the right feet if she has odd socks on)and then we hug kiss and i go downstairs and then about 10 mins later she is back down again she needs a bo bo (bottle) and i say no coz you 4 now your a big girl she crys i say yes and give in we do the whole thing again and then she will get up again i get frustrated and tell he please just go to bed a she starts crying iv tryed to ignor it and hope she will go to bed but it doesnt work so in the end i let her come down and we hug and she sits and watch's the telly (she wont watch the one in her room its scary)
the worst nights are when she wont settle @all and her and my son end up bouncing off the walls till midnight running up and down the stairs climbing over the stair gate in his room (he is 2)

thank you so much for your help i really apreciate it

just a thought~ why not "read" out loud to your daughter by opening a book whose plot you know ( for example, Little Red Riding Hood), and make up the story as you go along.....this was actually how my kids learned to read. they would look at the pictures and retell the story. it would encourage your daughter to do the same.

I think you have in part a typical toddler issue. My guess is that something is scary for her about going to sleep, and that is why she fights it so much.

Being the "loose" parent I am, I stayed with my little ones until they were asleep, and still do, actually, if they need it. My AS son has always had a difficult time falling asleep so of course bedtime was difficult for him: imagine being little with an overactive imagination sitting alone in a darkened room for 45 minutes trying to fall asleep. Well, there you go, that was the problem. So ... I would stay with him. I would tell these stories filled with elaborate descriptive detail, trying to create a mood much like a guided imagery meditation relaxation technique. The stories lasted about 20 minutes, and then I would cuddle with him or hold his hand or 20 minutes or so more. Half the time I fell asleep with him, but so it goes. I am totally a "whatever it takes" parent, lol.

I also really liked Ster's idea about books. That worked for my son, as well. Right before my daughter was born my husband had a good point, that the nightly routine above probably wasn't going to work too well with a baby in the house. So, instead, I would leave my son with a pile of picture books, turn on the baby monitor, and work on something in my room, listening in case any issues arose. He would leaf through his books in bed for about half an hour and then fall asleep on his own. That technique is the one that has served him the best for the longest: at 10, he always reads for about 20 minutes in bed to fall asleep. He looks forward to it.

Of course, once I had two children to get to sleep, our routines were constantly changing, trying to get it worked out, and we did go back to the guided imagery stories for a while, with both children snuggled together. What works best for the family is a constantly moving target.

My AS son 71/2 has never slept well , takes ages to go to sleep , then has regular nightmares. Finally after seeing another Dr (locum) it looks like we may finally get to try melatonin so I'm reassured by the positive comments about it on here.

I used to feel guilty when talking to other parents about bed time & the fact my son is often wide awake to the early hours , & always got the usual suggestions of controlled crying etc which obviously do not work . Now I go with the flow accept he's not just playing up & thankfully as he's at school I can catch up on some sleep in the day.

I have to say I've aged 15yrs in the last 7 but life's never dull.

My son is 8, and getting him to bed is a terrible problem. He physically fights me throws furniture and generally wont relax and go to sleep till around 2am. If he falls asleep before then its restless and he thrashes around a lot.
Sometimes allowing him to take the iPod to bed is a dream come true he can lie still for hours with music or audio books, but this does not always work.
Despite being destructive when he is angry he looks after the iPod well and has never taken out his frustrations on it.
We are in a bad situation as we live in a single room in a hostel and he has no bed or bedroom of his own, and this does not help!
He collects hundreds of cuddly toys and is allowed a few each night so he rotates them, BUT... they all have to be obsessively arranged in their own little beds with toy sheets and in exact order and heaven help anyone who interferes with this routine!

The original poster is my (ex) sister in law and her daughter is obviously my son's first cousin!

Hi Lezley! nice to see you on here - would be nice if you kept in touch though!

Kit, another forum I post at took an informal survey, and some 80% of the posters there noted sleep difficulties. Lez, I wish I could remember all their solutions.

One poster there had an interesting comment about consistency. She really expected her mom to send her to bed at the exact same time every night, and if her mom deviated by a few minutes it would upset her too much to be able to sleep. Now, I KNOW my son doesn't have this problem, but there are many other potential obsessive patterns that can play into the sleep issues. My son, for example, was very afraid of the dark for a while. And then there were the nightmare periods ... and the sheer loneliness of being in bed for 45 minutes alone, trying to fall asleep (he is a sensory seeker in the area of touch / human presence, and just being alone is stressful for him). As with so many things with our children, there are often hidden triggers in this area that compound the problem. Trying to ferret them out will help you find better solutions.

Last summer I did a lot of research on melatonin to see if there were any solid results. My conclusion was it was difficult to find any decent studies with concrete results. I know some families swear by melatonin but we never had a real need for it. I remember putting our boy to bed and having to walk him back every time he came out of his room. We wouldn't interact with him at all, we would just turn him around and walk him back to bed, no talking. This took about a week of many trips back and forth but now he stays in bed even though he may be awake.

We've used this for a few years now and it does seem to help - give it to him a little while before bedtime. And we do let him read in bed "quietly" if he still can't sleep.