Sleep overs

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Do you do sleepovers with your aspies?
We tried once...with very bad results....luckily I went to fetch him early in the evening allready.....tonight a friend is doing the sleepover at hour home......

We have, but one big thing to note is that my AS son may not be a great sleeper, but he isn't a bad one, and we knew from traveling how he did in new places.

When he was younger, maybe 7 (can't remember if it was before or after diagnosis), we turned the invitations back to our house, explaining to the other family that since our son was tricky, we wanted to be able to monitor the situation. By around 8 he was able to go to a couple of different families that had spent a lot of time with him and were particularly understanding of his quirks and needs. I think both had dad's who had coached my son in soccer. They also knew they could call us anytime for an emergency pick up.

By the time the school went to outdoor Ed in 5th grade, he was ready to join them.

At 14 he was traveling out of state without us.

I think this sort of thing is a constant conversation, what does the child want, what does he think he is ready for, and how do you, as a parent, want to test that out.

It may go better later. Give your son time to process his experiences to date, and figure out what he can do.

Good luck with tonight's event!

I am not ready to let youngest DS (almost 6yo ASD) go to a sleepover. I don't think he would actually be interested in that - he still comes and gets in our bed almost every night. Our older DS (NT) has had friends sleepover at our house and youngest gets to participate in that and does fairly well, even sleeping all night in his sleeping bag in the room with the other boys.

We have not done one with my 8 year old daughter. She also has sleep issues but she has not wanted to sleep over, even when a girl she likes asks. She has a lot of anxiety with new things and so I think it may be a while before she does a sleepover. My very close friend has a daughter 2 months younger and our girls have been friends literally since birth. When they come stay the other girl wants to sleep in the same room as my daughter but every time my daughter changes her mind at the last minute and won't do it. Nighttime is a very sensitive time and we have a bedtime routine that my daughter needs and having that disrupted causes anxiety for her.

My main goal for my daughter for the school year was to make a friend. She's 9 years old and is painfully shy. We've talked a lot about what a sleepover enatails and she is asking 2 little girl friends over next weekend. I think it will go well.

Feedback from the sleepover:
It went really well....until the boy left today!
My son got stuck on the idea that he wants to download a starwars game...we said no.....so the whole tantrum, meltdown, hitting, spitting exct. followed. We are just so tired and irritated with this whole weekend meltdown things!! !! !! EVERY Sunday!! !! ! We cant go anywhere, cant invite any one, we are hostige in hour own home, by our sons temper!

Deep breathe. Stick to the process (identify and mitigate triggers, etc; control the environment) and odds are good that this too shall pass.

(((((((((hugs))))))))

My guess, btw, is that the sleepover was stressful for him, even though he wanted to do it, and enjoyed it, and that is why you got a quick meltdown over something else later. It helps if you can plan things for after an event like this, so that your child will decompress before getting ideas stuck in his head, like wanting to download game X. Not that it is always in your control (that thought could have been triggered by the other child), but you can work on the odds.

My son's 10 and has done 3 non-family sleepovers (2 at our home & 1 at a friend's home) all with the same boy. In our case, I think the biggest reason it worked out okay is because the other boy has severe ADHD so the insensitive/blunt/rude comments that my son often makes aren't even noticed by the other boy. Likewise, the other boy's almost constant good moods keep my son from getting into too much of a funk and, since the other boy is 2 years younger, my son doesn't get near as frustrated in talking to him as he does with kids his own age. They do tend to argue a lot but the arguments last all of 5 minutes then they're on to other things.

Most of the time, however, I don't feel comfortable with my son doing sleepovers because I can never be sure when he's going to have a meltdown. I felt more comfortable with these sleepovers because I'm very good friends with the other boy's mom and she's had her own experiences with raising a child that's often more challenging than most.

I'm hoping he'll be able to do more sleepovers and outings with friends without me as he gets older but, for now, it's easier on both of us to limit those things.