Sleep difficulties - help!

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I was wondering if any other ASD parents have had trouble getting their kids to GO to sleep. I read about some kids having problems waking through the night but my son will stay up to 1-3 AM most nights and wake at 9 AM. Some days he will get a nap and other days he wont, it doesn't make a difference. I have tried waking him at 8:30, any earlier and I get a full angry meltdown and it doesn't make a lick of difference. Does anyone out there have any advice, any tips that could help? Does this go away or get better?

melatonin isn't recommended for long-term use, but an occasional 3mg at bedtime might give you a break from time to time. talk to your doc and see if he/she thinks it would be okay.

He's only two, do you know what kind of side effects it could have on a toddler? Does it help get a different rhythm? I just feel like I have tried everything and nothing seems to help but medication seems extreme. Is it normal with ASD children to need to have medication in order to have better sleep habits? I'm sorry for all the questions, we are going to be seeing a team of specialists in a little over a week so I am definitely going to be asking them. I just thought I would also ask parents who are more experienced than myself with all of this.

Melatonin is really mild and not truly a medication, it's just an over the counter pill. Try it on yourself first so you can see for yourself. And then definitely use it on your kid! We started Our daughter on 1.5 mg 45 minutes before bed when she was aged 2.5. What a miracle it was! Once he's had a couple nights rest, you'll be better able to also mend the sleep routine, which is of course a big part of healthy toddler sleep, but impossible to do anything about when they just don't sleep! We soon had to move up to 3 mg nightly, which we still do for her at almost age 4. We now know that 5 mg is too much for her (and everyone is different), but our pediatrician, developmental pediatrician, and psychiatrist all recommended we give her melatonin, saying up to 10 mg nightly indefinitely is safe. It was a life changer for us! Then working on our bedtime routine helped. But so you know, it only helps with falling asleep and you get used to it over time. The night terrors still occur nightly for my daughter. However, with better rest with melatonin, the night terrors got better for a time.

And I meant to add that I understand the hesitation to medicate. We have unfilled "real" prescriptions. Melatonin was the starting place that we agreed to with the psychiatrist so far because big drugs (antipsychotics!) seem extreme with a toddler to me, too.

I give both of my kids melatonin nightly, anywhere from 1-3mg is plenty for them. I start with 1mg and give another if they aren't sleeping by 9pm. It's completely safe as it's usually made inside your body anyway. I say usually because there is some research indicating that kids on the spectrum don't make melatonin, or enough melatonin, which is why they have trouble sleeping, and why giving them a melatonin supplement tends to work so darned well with them. I see no problem giving it to them. When they get older I can try to wean them off of it but for now it is still needed. In particular if it's true that they aren't making their own anyway, I don't see an issue with them taking it indefinitely.

I concur on the melatonin. It is reasonably safe and very effective. I get the liquid form though. A full mg just seems a bit excessive to me. I don't want something that will knock them out, I just want them to be able to go to sleep.

Two is a rough age. We put a baby gate across our son's doorway, which didn't completely stop him getting out but at least gave us a heads-up as he rattled it climbing over. He slept on a cushion on the floor because he kept falling out of his toddler bed. We let him take a bottle to bed way longer than recommended, because it sometimes helped him fall asleep. Basically we white-knuckled our way through that age.
Today he is ten and still stays up late. "Bedtime" for him means it's time to go to his room and do something quiet until he's ready to sleep. Mostly he plays with Legos, reads, or watches movies.

I could not afford the liquid (it was like 3x as much for some reason), so I actually started off the process with breaking up the 1mg sublingual tabs, crushing them in a mortar and pestal, and measuring out smaller doses using an analytical balance... I kid you not, I'm an analytical chemist so I had access to the balance and everything so... why not? Ultimately I found that, at least for my kids, less than 1mg wasn't all that effective for them anyway. YMMV, I'd bet some folks are way more sensitive to it than others. 1mg knocks me on my butt.

We also used a baby gate across the doorway. Both of my kids were allowed to do something quiet in their room.

By the time they were 4, both of them were excellent sleepers. In fact, they both used to ask to go to bed if I got preoccupied and didn't realize what time it is. They still sleep well. So there is hope.

My problem is the sleep to wake transition. Even at 10 and 14, I can't get past that one.

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