Page 1 of 1 [ 9 posts ]
20 Jul 2016, 5:04 am
20 Jul 2016, 8:20 pm
24 Jul 2016, 1:29 pm
25 Jul 2016, 5:08 pm
25 Jul 2016, 5:31 pm
Wow, this sounds very trying for busy parents. 
Does he ever like to do any sort of mellow activity? Could there be some sort of mellow, sleepytime activity, like coloring or something? Something not too exciting of course, so the temptation to shout is no longer there. Also, what does the pharmacist say about melatonin? Can he become tolerant to it/are there other alternatives you could alternate with? All the best. 
26 Jul 2016, 7:24 am
26 Jul 2016, 7:38 am
Bkdad82 wrote:
evilreligion wrote:
My six year old has always had problems getting to sleep.
Melatonin works a treat and always gets him off to sleep fine.
We have learned that it is best to give him his "tony" quite late, just before nine normally, and then he will sleep through till about 6 or 7. If we give it any earlier he tends to wake up much earlier which is obviously not good. So we have got into a good routine for the last year or so. We give him his melatonin at 8:45 he is asleep by 9:15 and then wakes between 6 and 7. All fine and dandy.......however.
Recently he has taken to randomly waking up at 2 or 3 am and simply not going back to sleep. He normally has his ipad in his room and so is watching that for hours but will often be running around, hooting, shouting and generally noisy .....he's not in distress he is just being his normal quite loud autistic self... which is fine during the day but no so fine at 3 in the morning!! ! !
Last night we tried taking his ipad away as we thought perhaps this was what was keeping him up. Cue massive shouting match and meltdown at 2:30 am in the end he wore us down and we gave in and gave him his pad back. He then happily played in his room but was still quite loud. Thankfully my youngest seems to sleep like an absolute log and never gets woken up by his brother nightime antics. This, however, is not the case for me and my wife.
The lack of sleep does not seem to bother him. After waking at 2:30 he will happily do a full day at school and then go through till his normal 9:15 sleep time. So I guess if he could just keep quiet and stay in his room then it would not be a problem. But reasoning with him about this seems impossible, he just does not seem to get the fact that shouting, jumping around and hollering at 2:30 in the morning affects other people and keeps us awake! He is verbal and perfectly capable of understanding such things .....
So any ideas people? It seems to be getting worse. We might try the slow release melatonin but I'm not sure how we will get him to swallow a capsule (he currently has liquid form which tastes sweet so he takes it no problem).
Anyway sorry if the above is a bit incoherent..... tired ..... very tired.....
I am open to any wisdom anyone can give me.
Melatonin works a treat and always gets him off to sleep fine.
We have learned that it is best to give him his "tony" quite late, just before nine normally, and then he will sleep through till about 6 or 7. If we give it any earlier he tends to wake up much earlier which is obviously not good. So we have got into a good routine for the last year or so. We give him his melatonin at 8:45 he is asleep by 9:15 and then wakes between 6 and 7. All fine and dandy.......however.
Recently he has taken to randomly waking up at 2 or 3 am and simply not going back to sleep. He normally has his ipad in his room and so is watching that for hours but will often be running around, hooting, shouting and generally noisy .....he's not in distress he is just being his normal quite loud autistic self... which is fine during the day but no so fine at 3 in the morning!! ! !
Last night we tried taking his ipad away as we thought perhaps this was what was keeping him up. Cue massive shouting match and meltdown at 2:30 am in the end he wore us down and we gave in and gave him his pad back. He then happily played in his room but was still quite loud. Thankfully my youngest seems to sleep like an absolute log and never gets woken up by his brother nightime antics. This, however, is not the case for me and my wife.
The lack of sleep does not seem to bother him. After waking at 2:30 he will happily do a full day at school and then go through till his normal 9:15 sleep time. So I guess if he could just keep quiet and stay in his room then it would not be a problem. But reasoning with him about this seems impossible, he just does not seem to get the fact that shouting, jumping around and hollering at 2:30 in the morning affects other people and keeps us awake! He is verbal and perfectly capable of understanding such things .....
So any ideas people? It seems to be getting worse. We might try the slow release melatonin but I'm not sure how we will get him to swallow a capsule (he currently has liquid form which tastes sweet so he takes it no problem).
Anyway sorry if the above is a bit incoherent..... tired ..... very tired.....
I am open to any wisdom anyone can give me.
Several ideas:
Create a very strong bedtime routine. We do massages and deep pressure which our kid likes. Dim the lights in the house before bedtime. No iPad anywhere near the kid during sleeping time. Ours is 3 and we have a door monkey (lock) on his door. We also have a camera. So he knows to stay in his room. If he wakes up full of energy at night and asks to leave we let him out but I've seen him often get back to sleep. Also when your routine is strong enough and your kid is tired he will go to sleep on his own without melatonin.
This is the common wisdom. But what I'm hearing from the adult autistic community is that some of them can't fall asleep ever without the meletonin. It doesn't seem to far out of bounds that part of their autism might be a sleep disorder. Think about how anyone feels when one doesn't have sleep. I act A LOT more autistic. And I would be interested to study these folks to see if their bodies are underproducing or underutilizing this hormone, or if they respond to placebo just as well as the meletonin.
If it was my kid, I would try a placebo one night. Maybe even double-blind it by having my spouse randomize whether I had a medicinal dose or just a tea-spoon of syrup. (Maybe we should be glad I never had kids!
)
26 Jul 2016, 4:49 pm
somanyspoons wrote:
Bkdad82 wrote:
evilreligion wrote:
My six year old has always had problems getting to sleep.
Melatonin works a treat and always gets him off to sleep fine.
We have learned that it is best to give him his "tony" quite late, just before nine normally, and then he will sleep through till about 6 or 7. If we give it any earlier he tends to wake up much earlier which is obviously not good. So we have got into a good routine for the last year or so. We give him his melatonin at 8:45 he is asleep by 9:15 and then wakes between 6 and 7. All fine and dandy.......however.
Recently he has taken to randomly waking up at 2 or 3 am and simply not going back to sleep. He normally has his ipad in his room and so is watching that for hours but will often be running around, hooting, shouting and generally noisy .....he's not in distress he is just being his normal quite loud autistic self... which is fine during the day but no so fine at 3 in the morning!! ! !
Last night we tried taking his ipad away as we thought perhaps this was what was keeping him up. Cue massive shouting match and meltdown at 2:30 am in the end he wore us down and we gave in and gave him his pad back. He then happily played in his room but was still quite loud. Thankfully my youngest seems to sleep like an absolute log and never gets woken up by his brother nightime antics. This, however, is not the case for me and my wife.
The lack of sleep does not seem to bother him. After waking at 2:30 he will happily do a full day at school and then go through till his normal 9:15 sleep time. So I guess if he could just keep quiet and stay in his room then it would not be a problem. But reasoning with him about this seems impossible, he just does not seem to get the fact that shouting, jumping around and hollering at 2:30 in the morning affects other people and keeps us awake! He is verbal and perfectly capable of understanding such things .....
So any ideas people? It seems to be getting worse. We might try the slow release melatonin but I'm not sure how we will get him to swallow a capsule (he currently has liquid form which tastes sweet so he takes it no problem).
Anyway sorry if the above is a bit incoherent..... tired ..... very tired.....
I am open to any wisdom anyone can give me.
Melatonin works a treat and always gets him off to sleep fine.
We have learned that it is best to give him his "tony" quite late, just before nine normally, and then he will sleep through till about 6 or 7. If we give it any earlier he tends to wake up much earlier which is obviously not good. So we have got into a good routine for the last year or so. We give him his melatonin at 8:45 he is asleep by 9:15 and then wakes between 6 and 7. All fine and dandy.......however.
Recently he has taken to randomly waking up at 2 or 3 am and simply not going back to sleep. He normally has his ipad in his room and so is watching that for hours but will often be running around, hooting, shouting and generally noisy .....he's not in distress he is just being his normal quite loud autistic self... which is fine during the day but no so fine at 3 in the morning!! ! !
Last night we tried taking his ipad away as we thought perhaps this was what was keeping him up. Cue massive shouting match and meltdown at 2:30 am in the end he wore us down and we gave in and gave him his pad back. He then happily played in his room but was still quite loud. Thankfully my youngest seems to sleep like an absolute log and never gets woken up by his brother nightime antics. This, however, is not the case for me and my wife.
The lack of sleep does not seem to bother him. After waking at 2:30 he will happily do a full day at school and then go through till his normal 9:15 sleep time. So I guess if he could just keep quiet and stay in his room then it would not be a problem. But reasoning with him about this seems impossible, he just does not seem to get the fact that shouting, jumping around and hollering at 2:30 in the morning affects other people and keeps us awake! He is verbal and perfectly capable of understanding such things .....
So any ideas people? It seems to be getting worse. We might try the slow release melatonin but I'm not sure how we will get him to swallow a capsule (he currently has liquid form which tastes sweet so he takes it no problem).
Anyway sorry if the above is a bit incoherent..... tired ..... very tired.....
I am open to any wisdom anyone can give me.
Several ideas:
Create a very strong bedtime routine. We do massages and deep pressure which our kid likes. Dim the lights in the house before bedtime. No iPad anywhere near the kid during sleeping time. Ours is 3 and we have a door monkey (lock) on his door. We also have a camera. So he knows to stay in his room. If he wakes up full of energy at night and asks to leave we let him out but I've seen him often get back to sleep. Also when your routine is strong enough and your kid is tired he will go to sleep on his own without melatonin.
This is the common wisdom. But what I'm hearing from the adult autistic community is that some of them can't fall asleep ever without the meletonin. It doesn't seem to far out of bounds that part of their autism might be a sleep disorder. Think about how anyone feels when one doesn't have sleep. I act A LOT more autistic. And I would be interested to study these folks to see if their bodies are underproducing or underutilizing this hormone, or if they respond to placebo just as well as the meletonin.
If it was my kid, I would try a placebo one night. Maybe even double-blind it by having my spouse randomize whether I had a medicinal dose or just a tea-spoon of syrup. (Maybe we should be glad I never had kids!
)It could be. I noticed when my kid is sleepy he pays much less attention. Insomnia is supposedly very common with autism. One thing I noticed is that the op gave in to the meltdown and gave the kid the iPad. Bright screens keep kids awake. My experience is that when my kid was 2 he would be too scared to sleep and would cry like crazy so we made the mistake of playing lullabies on the iPad. It worked at first but the made things a lot worse. It took a ton of effort for us to get rid of it but that helped him sleep better. Bright lights wake people up. Also the op is encouraging more tantrums by giving in.
26 Jul 2016, 5:23 pm
Bkdad82 wrote:
somanyspoons wrote:
Bkdad82 wrote:
evilreligion wrote:
My six year old has always had problems getting to sleep.
Melatonin works a treat and always gets him off to sleep fine.
We have learned that it is best to give him his "tony" quite late, just before nine normally, and then he will sleep through till about 6 or 7. If we give it any earlier he tends to wake up much earlier which is obviously not good. So we have got into a good routine for the last year or so. We give him his melatonin at 8:45 he is asleep by 9:15 and then wakes between 6 and 7. All fine and dandy.......however.
Recently he has taken to randomly waking up at 2 or 3 am and simply not going back to sleep. He normally has his ipad in his room and so is watching that for hours but will often be running around, hooting, shouting and generally noisy .....he's not in distress he is just being his normal quite loud autistic self... which is fine during the day but no so fine at 3 in the morning!! ! !
Last night we tried taking his ipad away as we thought perhaps this was what was keeping him up. Cue massive shouting match and meltdown at 2:30 am in the end he wore us down and we gave in and gave him his pad back. He then happily played in his room but was still quite loud. Thankfully my youngest seems to sleep like an absolute log and never gets woken up by his brother nightime antics. This, however, is not the case for me and my wife.
The lack of sleep does not seem to bother him. After waking at 2:30 he will happily do a full day at school and then go through till his normal 9:15 sleep time. So I guess if he could just keep quiet and stay in his room then it would not be a problem. But reasoning with him about this seems impossible, he just does not seem to get the fact that shouting, jumping around and hollering at 2:30 in the morning affects other people and keeps us awake! He is verbal and perfectly capable of understanding such things .....
So any ideas people? It seems to be getting worse. We might try the slow release melatonin but I'm not sure how we will get him to swallow a capsule (he currently has liquid form which tastes sweet so he takes it no problem).
Anyway sorry if the above is a bit incoherent..... tired ..... very tired.....
I am open to any wisdom anyone can give me.
Melatonin works a treat and always gets him off to sleep fine.
We have learned that it is best to give him his "tony" quite late, just before nine normally, and then he will sleep through till about 6 or 7. If we give it any earlier he tends to wake up much earlier which is obviously not good. So we have got into a good routine for the last year or so. We give him his melatonin at 8:45 he is asleep by 9:15 and then wakes between 6 and 7. All fine and dandy.......however.
Recently he has taken to randomly waking up at 2 or 3 am and simply not going back to sleep. He normally has his ipad in his room and so is watching that for hours but will often be running around, hooting, shouting and generally noisy .....he's not in distress he is just being his normal quite loud autistic self... which is fine during the day but no so fine at 3 in the morning!! ! !
Last night we tried taking his ipad away as we thought perhaps this was what was keeping him up. Cue massive shouting match and meltdown at 2:30 am in the end he wore us down and we gave in and gave him his pad back. He then happily played in his room but was still quite loud. Thankfully my youngest seems to sleep like an absolute log and never gets woken up by his brother nightime antics. This, however, is not the case for me and my wife.
The lack of sleep does not seem to bother him. After waking at 2:30 he will happily do a full day at school and then go through till his normal 9:15 sleep time. So I guess if he could just keep quiet and stay in his room then it would not be a problem. But reasoning with him about this seems impossible, he just does not seem to get the fact that shouting, jumping around and hollering at 2:30 in the morning affects other people and keeps us awake! He is verbal and perfectly capable of understanding such things .....
So any ideas people? It seems to be getting worse. We might try the slow release melatonin but I'm not sure how we will get him to swallow a capsule (he currently has liquid form which tastes sweet so he takes it no problem).
Anyway sorry if the above is a bit incoherent..... tired ..... very tired.....
I am open to any wisdom anyone can give me.
Several ideas:
Create a very strong bedtime routine. We do massages and deep pressure which our kid likes. Dim the lights in the house before bedtime. No iPad anywhere near the kid during sleeping time. Ours is 3 and we have a door monkey (lock) on his door. We also have a camera. So he knows to stay in his room. If he wakes up full of energy at night and asks to leave we let him out but I've seen him often get back to sleep. Also when your routine is strong enough and your kid is tired he will go to sleep on his own without melatonin.
This is the common wisdom. But what I'm hearing from the adult autistic community is that some of them can't fall asleep ever without the meletonin. It doesn't seem to far out of bounds that part of their autism might be a sleep disorder. Think about how anyone feels when one doesn't have sleep. I act A LOT more autistic. And I would be interested to study these folks to see if their bodies are underproducing or underutilizing this hormone, or if they respond to placebo just as well as the meletonin.
If it was my kid, I would try a placebo one night. Maybe even double-blind it by having my spouse randomize whether I had a medicinal dose or just a tea-spoon of syrup. (Maybe we should be glad I never had kids!
)It could be. I noticed when my kid is sleepy he pays much less attention. Insomnia is supposedly very common with autism. One thing I noticed is that the op gave in to the meltdown and gave the kid the iPad. Bright screens keep kids awake. My experience is that when my kid was 2 he would be too scared to sleep and would cry like crazy so we made the mistake of playing lullabies on the iPad. It worked at first but the made things a lot worse. It took a ton of effort for us to get rid of it but that helped him sleep better. Bright lights wake people up. Also the op is encouraging more tantrums by giving in.
Yup. Ipads at night are problematic. Well known to keep one from falling back to sleep.
But lets examine this idea that "giving in" to "tantrums" will encourage more. That's a very oppositional POV from which to parent. These old pure behaviorist ways of viewing a child, like they are just souless beings who respond to stimuli alone, is really outdated. My generation is here to speak loud and clear. This does not work! If you view taking care of your child's needs as "giving in" you will create the kind of PTSD that so many from my generation deal with. You will show them that the world is not safe and encourage them to retreat further into their shell.
Usually, we use the term meltdowns because "tantrums" implies that they child is trying to manipulate the situation. And yes, even autistic children can manipulate, but its much rarer. We just don't have the circuitry to recognize how to do that. Our meltdowns tend to be a sincere expression of unmet needs.
This kiddo needs to learn how to self-soothe back to sleep. Since ipad has been soothing in the past, it makes sense to try it here. The problem is with the light and the stimulation inherent to this device. So one needs to take that into consideration and really ponder if there is either a way to adjust the ipad to be less wakeful, or to provide something else that will give the needed soothing at night. Just ripping it away... well, it sounds like they tried that and it didn't work for anyone. Its a good lesson learned. Simply telling us to stop being autistic doesn't work. Punishing us by taking away the things we value definitely doesn't work. Setting yourself up as us vs. them doesn't work.
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