Inability to wake up, is this as aspie thing?

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Both of our kids have this problem to an extent, I don't at all. The older son (adult now)will sleep so hard nothing will wake him up. He could sleep through a war, people can't wake him or he will wake for a second and go back to sleep. He also will talk to you in a half awake state and not really remember it or be coherent.

The daughter (teenager) has this problem in some slightly different ways. She will wake if the noise is loud enough but it has to be really loud. When she does wake up she will frequently fall right back to sleep. She will respond or sometimes hold a conversation but not remember it because she was not actually awake. She will frequently flop over on the sofa after dinner and go into such a deep sleep she won't wake up.

The daughter had a sleep study done and they found nothing. Hers seems to be slightly worse in the fall to spring and somewhat better in the summer. It isn't tied to how much sleep she had either. She could be sleep deprived or sleeping enough hours and still have these issues.

It is very weird, it isn't like someone just wanting to hit the snooze button but like they literally can't wake all the way up. I am the total opposite. I sleep light and hear everything that goes on in the house at night. As they both get older and have more responsibilities this is obviously becoming a bigger problem.

I would guess that this is not an aspie thing, because I live with an aspie who falls asleep INSTANTLY and wakes up INSTANTLY, and I know 2 other aspies the same.

Have your kids ever been IQ tested? It's very common among high IQs to take a very long time to shut down and just as long to boot back up.

I've researched sleep to great extremes, there isn't a clinical explanation for why humans behave differently in entering and exiting the deep sleep stage of the sleep cycle or why some people's sleep cycles are different. That's why the sleep study didn't show anything, the normal range for sleep behaviour is enormous. They would have checked the right brain waves occur in the right stages of sleep and they go through all the normal stages at some point, that's about it.

If you're looking for advice on managing it, try to get them to understand the importance of routine. Same time to bed and same time awake every day, you'll see a difference in a few months. Although, there is a phase in adolescence when sleep patterns change dramatically, so might not be much you can do during that phase (I think it happens around 14-16, but google that, I might remember wrong).

With all due respects, I don't think how soon you fall asleep or your sleep patterns have anything to do with IQ. I am NT, with an average IQ, and it takes me a longggggggggggg time to fall asleep. My son is on the lower end of the spectrum with very little language, and it takes him over 2 hours to fall asleep each night. He also sleeps so little that we are - out of sheer desperation - finally looking into sleep meds for him.

My daughter has a very high IQ (tested twice). She falls asleep within minutes of her head hitting her pillow, sleeps through the night and wakes up with minutes of me pulling the sheets off of her in the mornings.

My son and I both have a hard time waking up in the morning. Neither of us can boast of a high IQ, although I am - obviously - a lot more functional than he is.

Problems with sleep of all kinds are very common among autistic people. People don't complain about Hypersomnia as much as insomnia, but the problem exists for some.

http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/featu ... nts-autism
http://www.autism.org.uk/about/health/child-sleep.aspx
https://www.autismspeaks.org/family-ser ... ness/sleep

Parasomnias of various kinds are quite common in my family. I fall asleep easily and am sluggish in the morning, and have had trouble with intermediate states between sleep and waking (aka hypnagogic/hypnopompic states.)

As a toddler and until about halfway into middle school I was very bad at falling asleep. Never had any problems getting up however and never felt tired. Right now, I need a lot of sleep. Anywhere from 10-12 hours to be well-rested, and getting up is difficult. I sleep through the loudest alarms, it's so bad that my parents in the next room wake up because of the alarm and then come wake me up to complain about it (I mostly have to get up before them). I usually get my sleep in the weekend and force myself to work on 5-6 hours of sleep during the week.

Couldn't tell you if it has to do with autism however.

Sleeping very deeply and being hard to wake up can be normal for teenagers. There's actually a shift in circadian rhythms in teens, where they're actually physiologically designed to stay up late at night and sleep in longer in the morning. And even if they do get to bed at a reasonable time, if you sleep at the wrong time for your circadian rhythm it tends to be less restful sleep, so most teens are a bit sleep-deprived most of the time. Some high schools have started having classes start and end later in the day to make it easier for teens to get proper sleep.

Another thought is, since it gets worse in fall to spring, it might be related to seasonal affective disorder. This is a mood disorder triggered by lack of sunlight when the days grow shorter, and it causes depression, oversleeping and often overeating. It's treated by light therapy to trick the brain into thinking there's a longer period of sunlight than there really is.

At least with the daughter's issue there may be a seasonal component. She has some problems in the summer but less so than in the winter.

I have trouble waking up sometimes when it's someone else that wakes me up. I can even talk to people while half asleep but sometimes I can't so I nod or moan. I tend to fall asleep right after this happens. Even though this happens, I have a pretty good body clock and I can wake up by myself early enough to get ready.

I used to have a terrible time falling asleep due to stress, but I can fall asleep easily if I'm sleepy enough. It doesn't always happen quickly, but I can't really tell. My sense of time doesn't work well when I'm falling aleep.