Sleeping patterns

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Does anyone else have this problem?
My adult son is PDD-NOS. He works at home so he doesn't have to keep to a schedule. He goes to bed and wakes up at different times every day. It seems like he lives on a 26 hour clock - every day he gets up 2 hours later. He works his way around the clock. Half of the time, he is awake mostly during daytime hours, half the time mostly at night. It is very hard to make appointments for him because we don't know if he will be awake then.

It sounds like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hou ... e_syndrome

I remember reading somewhere that everyone is supposed to have a 25 hour cycle, but they adapt to 24. When I don't have anywhere to be (like during the summer when I'm out of school) I think I have a 25 or 26 hour cycle.

If it wasn't for my job that would be my natural sleep pattern. Almost like a natural swing shift.

Suppose I could change my living situation to just having an internet business. No set work hours. I would totally just go to bed when I naturally felt tired which could be any hour of the day or night. Or conceivably changed once in a while with an occasional nap.

There has been some time between jobs while I was at my parents' place and it drives them nuts.

I have a flatmate who has a non 24hr sleep pattern.

I suspect he isn't NT.

I have a delayed sleep pattern (would sleep between from early morning until noon if possible). I find melatonin (and having to get up for day shifts at work) help.

Thank you for the responses, especially the wiki link. I had no idea that it was a defined condition. I thought it might be related to his autism. I can't describe how it makes me feel to know that this is something he has no control over in addition to the autism. I don't see how the treatments suggested would work for a genetic condition. I live on a 24 hour clock but I can't change myself to become a early riser no matter what I do.
If he had been born 50 years earlier, people would have just labeled him eccentric.
I wonder how many of his difficulties with school were related to being forced to stay on a normal schedule. Since he has been able to control his sleeping cycles, so many of his social difficulties have improved. Up until recently he had extreme difficulty talking to strangers and now he acts friendly and outgoing. I just attributed it to having more control over when he has to talk to people. I hope he never has to take a job with defined hours.

I think I have something similar, but with careful planning I can slip into a 24 hour cycle.

I sleep in 3 hour waves ...really the time varies from 3 hours to 3:15, but it takes months for that variance to slowly shift.

So, I sleep just fine after 3,6 or 9 hours at a stretch. If an alarm or my cat or some other event wakes me up after, say 7 or 8 hours ... I cannot wake up for about 3-4 hours. Am groggy, have bad coordination, can't talk, etc.,

So, say I have to work at 6 am. It's 1am and I'm just getting home and climbing into bed. If I set the alarm for 5am, I'll be righteously messed up tomorrow. But if I set it for 4, I pop right out of bed and am well focused all day at work. When I come home, I'll need another 3 hours right away (cause 3 hours only lasts me about 12 hours of alertness. 3 hours is much better than 4 in this instance.

I discovered my cycles by noting when I went to bed and woke on my days off, also noting the circumstance that woke me. If I woke of my own volition, I'd do the math. After 6 months of this, I learned about my 3-6-9 requirements.

My roommate did same experiment and found he had 4.5 hour cycles ...he tends to sleep for 13.5 hours on his days off...

worth noting.... question 147 on this aspie test http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php is "Do you have atypical or irregular sleeping patterns that deviate from the 24-h cycle?"

Yup, my sleep cycle is highly erratic.

It is very common and well documented for autistics to have sleep problems, try googling autism sleep cycle...

I wish I had known this sooner. I have tried to think back, but I am pretty sure we didn't have problems until he reached junior high, and even then, we thought he didn't want to get up because he didn't want to go to school.
It wasn't until some time in high school that during the summers his sleep cycle would change. We always thought that he needed more sleep than most people, but I thought that was because he needed the extra rest in order to handle the pressures he felt when he was awake. We figured that he was so much more relaxed during the summer because he didn't have to deal with the social issues, not because he was sleeping at the right times for him. I still think that not having the pressure of school did contribute to his calmness during the summer, but I can't ignore the fact that now he can handle social stress so much better. He even willingly puts himself into situations he would have resisted before.
As he aged, I always saw that he was learning how to act without anyone telling him. He learned to make eye contact on his own, and he continually adjusted his behavior to appear NT. In some respects, the fact that he can't stand drawing attention to himself was probably his greater motivator in trying to appear NT, even though he didn't know he was autistic. He just didn't want to be seen as different.
So I don't know how much of his ability to adapt is due his sleep changes or to his ability to adapt.
That 3 hour wave thing is odd. I can't imagine feeling rested after 3 hours, but then I wonder if it is because after than you enter another phase of the sleep cycle and if you get woken up in the middle of that, that is worse. I know if I wake up naturally and then go back to sleep, it is harder to get up later.
I found this article:

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifeha ... cycle.html

In this article, Glen Rhodes talks about the sleep cycle that he tried to use on his sleeping pattern. He now sleeps 3 hours a night and power nap for 90 minutes in the evening. He found out this is far better than getting a 8 hours of sleep. There are some researches behind it. For instance Glen referenced a study from Applied Cognitive Studies:

“Studies show that the length of sleep is not what causes us to be refreshed upon waking. The key factor is the number of complete sleep cycles we enjoy. Each sleep cycle contains five distinct phases, which exhibit different brain- wave patterns. For our purposes, it suffices to say that one sleep cycle lasts an average of 90 minutes: 65 minutes of normal, or non-REM (rapid eye movement), sleep; 20 minutes of REM sleep (in which we dream); and a final 5 minutes of non-REM sleep. The REM sleep phases are shorter during earlier cycles (less than 20 minutes) and longer during later ones (more than 20 minutes). If we were to sleep completely naturally, with no alarm clocks or other sleep disturbances, we would wake up, on the average, after a multiple of 90 minutes–for example, after 4 1/2 hours, 6 hours, 7 1/2 hours, or 9 hours, but not after 7 or 8 hours, which are not multiples of 90 minutes. In the period between cycles we are not actually sleeping: it is a sort of twilight zone from which, if we are not disturbed (by light, cold, a full bladder, noise), we move into another 90-minute cycle. A person who sleeps only four cycles (6 hours) will feel more rested than someone who has slept for 8 to 10 hours but who has not been allowed to complete any one cycle because of being awakened before it was completed…. ”

So Burnbridge, it sounds like you are completely NT in this regard.
The wiki page says that odd sleep cycles are caused by genetic abnormalities, but doesn't relate it to autism.

I seem to be on a 27 to 32 hour cycle instead of 24.

When I was 20, I'd sleep 3 or 4 times a week, so I could finish a job without dreaming up more ideas to make it better, but lower-paid. Now, I sleep 2 or 3 times a day, because I'm still jangled from the way I was woken up once 6 years ago.

Wow, that sounds like me.
left to my own devices, without any commitments on a clock, I slip into a 26 hour cycle.

If I'm locked into a "regular" 24 hour cycle, where I have to get up and be somewhere at a certain time, I am dead tired all day.

i also seem to be on a 26-27 hour cycle, but luckily, i only need an average of 5 hours sleep, so i can adapt to a 24-hour society relatively easily.
i do indeed have my days where i am productive at 5 am, and others where it takes untill 9 pm for me to do anything useful, but i have yet to find a pattern in that

my sleep schedule is awful. infact i don't think there even is a schedule.
i seem to postpone going to bed, even though i actually really like sleep:/, and am often tired and want sleep. sometimes it feels like i'm waiting for something fulfilling to happen, i dunno

i'm constantly trying/wanting to rectify it but don't get very far