Go. To. SLEEEEEEEEP!

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Vivienne, does your son have a good time at school? I was a mini insomniac until the about age of 9. School was so stressful that going to sleep meant that school was right around the corner, it was more fun to just mess around at night and try to forget about having to go to school.

This is a very interesting topic. It seems to me that most kids on the spectrum tend to be either night owls or morning larks......nothing inbetween! For us night owls, our circadian clocks need resetting......when you are on the spectrum you don't realise when you are tired... same as not realising when we are hungry or poorly.

I agree with a previous poster about the miracle of melatonin, it is not many that it doesn't work for and is safe and gentle. Although you can get it over the counter in the USA and other countries, for those of us in the UK we have to seek it through a child psychiatrist via prescription. In the USA it is deemed as a food stuff, whereas in the UK it is a drug...I won't voice my opinion on that it would get censored

Routine is very important to a kid on the spectrum and it is often the settling down time that is most difficult. But bear with it and try and make it a great relaxing time for both of you instead of stressful.

Children are unaware of their 'self' so of course cannot appreciate that anyone else has a life! The fact that mummy needs sleep and time to chill out is not part of that child's thought process, it isn't real. But with gentle reinforcement and repetition they will come to understand and respect that other people are REAL.

If you can try and get some Melatonin it will I am sure make your life much easier and your child much happier as the sleep they get with it is clean and hangover free. Very gentle and don't worry if there was an emergency in the middle of the night and you needed to wake them..you can! Easily.

Hope that helps
www.jelibean.com

We had to finally break down and get him on medication to help him sleep. Every once in awhile he tries to go to bed without it to see if he still needs it, and the next night, he is back on it again. His poor sleep pattern is just not consistent with the "world" view of which hours someone should be asleep to function! If he could do his own hours, I joke with him that he would be up for 36, down for 12 and the pattern would continue. Just doesn't match with any schedules that we have to go by, like school and work, unfortunately. He would just go until he crashes if he wasn't on medication to sleep at the "normal" time.

I have to concur on the use of Melatonin. My son had great difficulty with sleeping. These stories are so familiar. Thankfully my son was able to verbalize his difficulty, part of it centered on fear/anxiety, part of it centered on sleep was "boring" and that he would "miss" something while sleeping, part of it was stresses from the day, etc. His child psychologist suggested trying Melatonin (sold over the counter in the pharmacy section) in the US. It has been a miracle. He began taking a low dose every night. He no longer needs it every night, but knows that it is available to him when he does need it and finds he is having difficulty in getting to sleep or staying asleep. We have gone from a four hour time range of getting to sleep and then getting up several times a night to taking it when needed half an hour before bed and getting a good nights rest. I would suggest that anyone considering trying Melatonin consult their medical professional. Although it is very safe and gentle and not habit forming, you should always discuss the ingestion of any medication with a medical doctor.

Is staying up late common for kids with Autism? My son was just diagnosed HFA, and that damn kid stays up till all hours of the night. Sometimes he bothers my husband, and sometimes he's quiet.

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Mother of a 4 year old who was diagnosed with HFA on 1/6/09. I'm just here trying to understand, and soak in.

I feel for you. We have had (and frequently still have) more than our share of sleepless nights.

My son (10) usually reads, before that he would look at picture books or draw in a notebook.

My mom said I had my days & nights confused from the time I was a baby, and at 42 not much has changed, I kind of just go with the flow anymore, I think it was at it's worst when I hit my teens.

My daughter is 16 and has ALWAYS had sleep problems. She tells me sleep is a waste of time. She also is afraid of the dark. She sleeps with a full light on and a tv on. She stays up so late each night, and then of course is exhausted the next day. She would like to sleep with us, but I have explained to her that won't work out. Just wanted to let you know I feel for you! We have had this issue for 16 years!

I've had sleep problems my whole life. If it's really bad I'll take sleeping pills or Nyquil or something that will make me sleepy. Hot baths before sleeping help. But generally I've just had to live with my scattered sleep schedule. I didn't sleep the night before last and yesterday I was nodding off in class. (I'm in college.) I was too tired to drive home so I drove to my boyfriend's apartment, after telling both him and my parents where I was going, and slept. I woke briefly when my boyfriend got home from work, then went back to sleep. Now I am up surfing the Internet, wondering how I'm going to get back on a normal schedule. But if I get back to sleeping from midnight to seven, I'll just get off schedule in a couple days again. Grr. Those weighted blanket things sound really comfy, though. Now I'm considering it for myself...is 21 too old for one?

I could never sleep with it was convient for the rest of the world. I'm not even tired yet. I've always slept better in the daytime and perfered to be active at night but unfortunatly society demands we be durinal. Even when I finnaly am able to fall alseep at night, I just can't sleep as deeply and soundly than I do in the day. I can only stay alseep for an hour at night, I wake up then fall alseep for another hour. I have never been able to sleep though the night. I get a more satisifying sleep if I am allowed to be nocternal.

I think most of us parents feel your frustration. Especially with the baby being woken up, and you not getting enough sleep. Sleep is underrated...you can't be at your best when you're sleep-deprived.

There are some excellent suggestions in this discussion! For my daughter, nothing seemed to give her enough rest until we got her on the correct medication. We were recently able to lower the dosage to half of what it was and she's sleeping just fine and gets through her days without falling asleep in class or having to take extended naps on the weekends. She's also not grouchy from lack of sleep. When she's having a lot of anxiety, it seems to help if I put her in bed with a heated corn-sack, and rub her back. She also needs her three night lights and her stuffed critters in bed with her to feel safe.

Whatever it takes, you'll figure it out, but your one child keeping the rest of the family from getting adequate rest, not to mention your Aspie child suffering from lack of sleep, isn't a good thing. Good luck to you and hang in there

I feel your pain. My son is 4.5 and still wakes up almost every single night. He used to stay awake for hours at a time. At first I thought it was because he was breastfed, and that he was hungry. Then I blamed it on teething. Then I just wasn't sure what the h__-l was going on until I kept reading that children with ASD do have sleep issues. I can tell you there were times that I thought I would lose my mind. I am the type that needs about 8 or 9 hours of sleep.

He is getting better. Now he just wakes up quietly, and I go in there and tell him to get back in bed. I usually sit there until he goes back to sleep, and sometimes I fall asleep at the end of his bed. I just need my sleep, I don't care which bed I am in! Fortunately, I am a stay at home mom, so I can nap at times during the day when he is at school. My heart goes out to those who have other kids and have to work. I would like to go back to work part time, but I am afraid that I will be tired all the time. My husband and I argue about this all of the time, because he does not understand that children with ASD have these issues!! !! By the way, I believe my husband has AS tendencies because he stays up really late, and gets up very early, and does not seem to be tired! Go figure!

Hi.... I clicked on your thread b/c I said the exact words in the title, in a very aggravated tone last night to my 8-year-old.

Anyway - here's what jumped out at me from the OP.

I don't know your sleeping set-up, I mean who sleeps where, when, in your house. Do your children sleep in a shared bedroom, or does your older child have to pass by the sleeping baby's bed, when he gets up to go looking for you? If so, is it possible for you to rearrange things temporarily (until the situation with your older son resolves) so that you are positioned between the sleeping baby and the wakeful child, at least during the time of night when wakeful child is most prone to getting up & waking the baby. For example, if the older one sleeps in a bedroom, and you hang out in the den for a while until he settles down - maybe put the baby down to sleep in a back corner of the den (in a porta-crib or whatever) for the earlier part of the night. Then you can sort of redirect the waker away from the sleeping baby when he does get up, and it'll be easier for you to focus on helping him back to bed. Might be easier to feel nurturing and helpful toward the one having trouble sleeping if you weren't doing damage control with the baby he wakened!

I tend to come up with better approaches to a child's problem behavior one on one, when I am sort of calm & rational. Usually I'm not at my most calm and rational while I'm also trying to console a distressed baby. Especially if I had calmed said baby from hysterical screaming to peaceful sleep just a short while ago. Especially when child A (problem behavior do-er) is also responsible for the baby being distressed in the first place - even if I feel it was unintentional on the part of child A, I am not quite a saint, and I get peeved when things go "wrong" too much at once. And not only do I feel bad when I start to have a cranky tone myself, but I find that makes everyone dig in their heels a little harder and then we have me:

"Could you PLEASE go to SLEEP........... no, I mean NOW!" ::blood feels like it's boiling::




Also - he may "know" better - I'm 52 though, and I still do things I "know" aren't the best choice. Sometimes the need to do X behavior is stronger than the (abstract) knowledge that the majority of people around me don't think or feel that I should do X behavior. What I have learned is to do everything I can to minimize the potential negative impact of my behavior on others.