6 year old aspie still sleeps in parents bed

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Hey guys-

I have posted quite a few posts now but I am still a newbie!

My 6 year old son was recently diagnosed AS and ADHD(I have known for years just recently was ready for the DX), we started meds not too long ago and he is doing amazing in school. He has a few issues and we are working on an IEP. I could not be happier with his teacher and school. They are so very understanding.

He is a very very anxious little dude and still is unable to sleep on his own. This is not an issue with us as a family. He has no problem falling asleep and staying asleep in our bed. He is very very afraid to even go into his own room at night time, so he has his own bed but has only slept in it like 2 times.

I just wanted some opinions on when/if I should push him to start sleeping on his own? I don't want to hinder him by "babying" him but its really not a bother and I acutally prefer him to sleep in our bed because I am able to rest better, I'm also a worry wart.

Obviously my bf and I do not engage in x rated things in the bedroom, we have a living room and office that we use

There are a lot of people who will disagree, but if it's not a problem to you, then ok. It took quite a while to get my daughter into her own bed consistently. Don't be afraid to use monster spray or such if needed. Monster spray is just water with maybe some lavender essential oil added in a spray bottle. Other scents could work. Sleep is good. A lot of families sleep with their children, then as they get older start transitioning. Generally they start with a small bed or pallet in the parent's room.

My daughter is 8.5 and still sleeps in my bed.

If I put her in her own bed she wakes constatly and we get no sleep. In my bed with me, she sleeps mostly soundly.

My daughter goes in a panic if you even SUGGEST she sleep alone in her bed. Her bedroom is close to mine but she still has too much anxiety.

We are working on getting her anxiety lowered, and until that happens I don't have a problem with her in my bed. She has so much anxiety during the day, at night she recharges by feeling safe. I don't want her nights to be yet another source of discomfort.

I also want to say that it is society's "rules" that say we should put our kids in their own bed. Now that we are a civilized society with many bedrooms in our homes we put our children in their own rooms and encourage them to be independent at young ages.

You are not a bad parent if your child needs to sleep with you at night. I don't believe you are making him more "dependent" by allowing him to sleep with you. Perhaps with a NT child, with typical development towards independence and a typical self confidence, fostering them instead of pushing them to stand on their own mght be detrimental, but not with our chldren who struggle with anxiety.

I always felt that I should meet the kids where they are. If they need me at night, that's ok - they won't want to sleep with me forever.

My NT guy, started pulling away at about 10 as expected.

My aspie guy, not so much. He'll be 12 on Tuesday and still wants to sleep with us. My DH and older son, tell me that he needs to get out of the bed soon because of puberty, and the stuff that happens to boys when they're sleeping. My son intellectually gets it but still needs to be close. None of the modesty and need for privacy have come up for him as they did for my older guy. Little one is now BIG and he still wants to sleep with us, still wants me to help him in the shower. UGH this did not take care of itself like I thought.

Right now we have a mat on the floor next to me. He lays with me to fall asleep, then DH helps him to the mat. It's progress, but not what I expected.

I agree with the prevailing opinion in this thread.

As for how to make sure it stays child led and not parent hindered, having a separate bed for him and continuing to ask what can be done to make the room more comfortable will help. And check sometimes if he is willing to try his bed if you sleep on it with him.

I still lie with my 11 year old NT daughter as she falls asleep; this is when she tells me all the good stuff, and she just loves that one on one mommy time. My 14 year old AS son has been going to sleep by himself for years, probably since he got his loft bed - I can't really go up there, and he knew that was how it was going to be, but he really wanted that loft bed. Still, when I say goodnight, he grabs onto my hand and doesn't want to let go; but I'm not willing to stand like that for long and he's always known that, too.

As they go through puberty there will be a time that the whole thing just gets too weird to you and / or your husband, if it goes on that long. At that point, I think you allow yourself to vocalize each occasion as you feel it, discuss it, and that will serve as fair warning if you eventually have to push the issue further. We don't have the bed thing with my son, but there have been other habits we've had to severe. He accepts it as part of growing up, the tit for tat with the new privileges he gets.

Keep in mind that nighttime can be an anxious time for any child and can be downright terrifying for an autistic child. It is common for autistic people to have only uneasy dreams and to wake up badly disoriented at night. Furthermore, autistic brains tend to mature extremely unevenly, so milestones by which you might compare non-autistic children - such as what age they could comfortably spend the night alone - should be considered irrelevant for autistic children.

You know your child, and are best suited to determine what best serves your child. All I can say is that at age six I wouldn't be the slightest bit concerned yet.

Thank you so much everyone. I guess I am still one of those people that lets the mainstream parents influence me sometimes. I am a very non conventional parent. I had Joe young, when I was 22 so I am one of the younger mothers at his school. Sometimes I feel like all the other moms judge me, because I look young, and Joe is AS. But that is a whole different topic! LOL

I'm an Aspie married to an NT, with four NT kids. My kids always slept with us as babies and were moved to their own beds when they got a little older. Two did just fine, two ended up sleeping with us for longer. One until about 10 and the other until about 8.

When it became a problem, because eventually there is only so much room in the bed when the child grows, we started laying down with them in their bed until they went to sleep. They would come get us when they woke up at night, or actually they would climb in our bed. Usually one of us would take them back to their bed and lay with them until they fell asleep then come back to bed. Doing it that way, making them know that they cannot sleep with us unless they are sick, and being firm that we are going to lay with them in their bed, seemed to make the transition a little easier. Sometimes when they would come in there at night we didn't wake up, so they snuck quite a few nights in that way.

It takes a while, but over time they come in there less and less. Also, it's very draining to get up in the middle of the night and go lay with a child who may not go immediately back to sleep, then prevent yourself from falling asleep and go get in your own bed. But, it's rewarding when you start seeing results.

Also, if you do this and when your son starts sleeping full nights in his bed, or most of a night do not mention it to him, or praise him about it unless he mentions it to you first. We made that mistake with the first one, and it apparantly this reminds the child that they are missing out on sleeping with Mom and Dad. They remember it that night. And for quite a few after, so it's a big setback. If your son mentions it to you, praise him for it, and tell him how proud you are of him, but don't make too big a deal out of it or he will expect that big reward every night for sleeping in his bed. Those are the kinds of mistakes we made with our first, and that's why it took ten years to have a bed to ourselves for the whole night.

I slept with my mother until I was 12.

Good luck!

Frances

I think what olive oil mom says works. For us the problem is DH travels for a living, so DS can hop into bed and I'm none the wiser. We have made progress several times, but due to the pesky travel, we regress. Over and over.

The long an short of it I wouldn't be worried at 6.

Our daughter (who is now 6 with classic autism) used to have her bed in our room but since moving has her own room and a big bed. She slept in her bed the first couple of nights but fell out of it and then was afraid to sleep in there. We have butterfly lights on the wall and we got her a railing and some pillows and we call it her nest, still no go. Our son is now 9 (Aspie) and he slept in our bed until we moved here. When we first moved they would both fall asleep in here and then my husband would move my son. We did this at the old house too but he would always come back. Finally it worked here and he now has an established bed time ritual and LED lights in his room, he also sleeps with one of our cats and has a very bright night light. Our daughter we are still moving after she is asleep and sometimes she stays and sometimes she wakes up and comes back. I think if you (I have my husband do it because I can hardly walk due to my bone disease) keep putting him back in his bed and trying the ideas mentioned here and try some LED lights or maybe a projector or a sound machine in his room. Someday he will eventually stay.....also try to establish a routine for bed, that really helps.
My daughters main problem is that she has always been prone to night terrors. They are not at all as bad as they where when she was younger. We used to have to put a cold wash rag on her face to stop her from screaming, it would wake her up. I have found that night terrors are common in autistic children. So she gets woken up easier.

The anxiety needs to be determined and addressed (with therapy, medication, or both).

I wouldn't worry about what parents of NT's say, but then again, I tend not to share things with people who I know/suspect will be critical. I have too much going on to deal with that, too, as I am sure do you.

Our son would probably be sleeping with us now, except for the fact that we moved, and I made a big huge deal about how he would be getting his own room. I asked him for input in decorating it, so he could have his special interests represented. It surprisingly worked. I started off by staying in there until he fell asleep. (I warned him I would be going back to my room, later, so he would not be terrified that he would not see me when he woke up, and naturally he wasn't good at sleeping through the night.) Gradually, after a while it got to where I could do his night time routine and snuggles, and I could leave after that with no issues.

I am glad it worked out, but that said, I wouldn't have been despondent if it hadn't. It just seemed like a natural time to try again because with the move we had to confront his rigidity/routine/sameness issues, anyway.

If it does not bother you, or him, I wouldn't worry,

If you do feel an imperative at some point (not peer pressure, though) you could maybe float around a "plan" for turning what would be his room into a (irresistible special interest) room. If he seems interested, ask for input in decorating it etc. so he can spend time in there during the day and get familiar with it. Don't push him to sleep there. Then maybe after a good while, when you know he loves the room and is really comfortable, float the idea of having a sleep over and sleep with him there even if you have to use a sleeping bag or something. If it sounds fun to him, you could eventually segue that into an eventual move in.

But again there is nothing weird about your current situation and if he awakes too much at night and/or has anxiety than it is not an ideal time.

my son is going to turn nine next week. he falls asleep faster and sleeps more soundly (even if i don't lol) in my bed. when he goes to bed in his bed he talks to himself for hours. he will go to sleep in his bed when he is ready.