my 8 year-old autistic son is terrified of sleeping alone

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Does anyone have any suggestions of strategies for helping an 8 year-old autistic kid learn how to sleep alone in their own room?

My son has high functioning autism, which means he doesn't bang his head and can look people in the eyes but he has a lot of problems with social interactions and can completely lose it if his routines are broken. It also means he is as sharp as a tack with a lot of things (e.g. math, science, etc).

One of the problems we've struggled with is helping our son learn how to sleep on his own. Every time we try and get him to sleep in his room he starts having a fit of hysterics, with tears streaming down his face and hyperventilation. He also gets this way when he is "alone" and no one is nearby (he won't even take a shower unless the bathroom door is open and someone is close enough that he can call to them while he is bathing, which he does frequently to confirm he isn't alone).

My son has even coined a term for this fear: "aloneaphonbia". The irony is that he has problems dealing with other people yet he doesn't like being alone... But that is for another discussion.

Anyway, I am wondering if anyone has ideas of what we can do to help our son with the specific issue of sleeping alone? It is just becoming unworkable having him crawl into bed with Mom and Dad now that he is getting bigger. He doesn't just crawl into bed, he wants to mush himself into someone as if he is afraid we will leave. This is making it increasingly difficult for Mom and Dad to get any sleep.

We've tried night-lights and leaving his bedroom door open with the lights on in the hall. We've tried having music playing in his room when he goes to bed. I've even sat on a chair in his room till he went to sleep but he invariably wakes up and comes to our bed within 10 minutes after I leave.

What else can we try?

Wow, your son sounds exactly like me. Fortunately I've gotten a little bit better since I was a kid.

Have you tried keeping the TV on while he sleeps? That helped me a lot. I'd fall asleep while watching tv and then if I wake up in the middle of the night, it brings me comfort to see it on. I will end up watching the tv until I fall back to sleep.

Also, does he have a sibling that he can share a room with? That helped me at one point when I had to share a room with my sister.

Also, have you asked him why he has anxiety about sleeping and bathing alone? Maybe he has a concern that he's afraid to talk about.

when i was eight, i had to sleep with at least two stuffed animals, one on each side. they "guarded" me in my sleep and probably gave me some tactile comfort as well.

perhaps a pet might be helpful here also.

duplicate deleted.

Would it help to have a baby monitor in your room and his, so he would know you could hear him any time?

Maybe if it was a 2 way radio. That way he could hear us too.

Here's a couple ideas I came up with today I would like to run by the group.

1. Putting a mat on the floor of Mom and Dad's room that our son could sleep on as a transition mechanism. If he can learn to sleep on the mat by himself then maybe that would be a first step to him learning how to sleep alone.

2. Put some kind of TV in his room that we let him watch soothing things at bed time (being strict about what could be watched on the TV). I don't like the idea of a TV, but if it helped, maybe it's worth trying.

I like the tv idea The tv channels I use to like watching were the disney channel and nickelodeon. You can take the remote to your bedroom so he can't easily change the channel.

The only fear I have about the mat in your room is he'll get TOO comfortable with that idea and it'll be hard to transition to his own bedroom.

Is it also possible to just keep putting him back in bed after he falls asleep in your bed? Whenever my parents would do that I eventually got sick of getting up and walking to their room after doing that several times in the night.

Also, does he have a clock in his room? I use to get comforted when I'd wake up and say to myself "ok, only 2 more hours until everyone wakes up, I can get through this until then".

I wish you luck with him!! I know you can do it!

I didn't sleep on my own until I was 12 or so. At the time I said I was scared, but in hindsight I think a lot of the reason I wanted someone to sleep with me was that if I was held then that fulfilled my need for 'deep touch' and improved my sleep quality. Has your son ever tried using a weighted blanket? They help me sleep a lot, it may help him too.

If the weighted blanket doesn't help, is there a family pet that can sleep with him? When I did start sleeping on my own I always had the family dog with me.

Our son is exactly the same - he tells us that he hates being 'lonely'. He used to take until around 11pm to fall asleep which is crazy for a 6 year old in Prep (Grade 0). His paediatrician recommended Melatonin which is great, he usually falls asleep within half an hour of taking it. It doesn't 'keep' him asleep, so in addition he had a weighted blanket which seems to really help too.
And finally, we have a cat that has to sleep in his room with him. She is a difficult and antisocial but for some reason she 'tolerates the boy' as we put it.
We are on a waiting list for our son to receive a therapy dog which helps a huge amount with his insomnia and anxiety. We had a trial dog a couple of months ago, that dog wasn't a fit as he just didn't bond with our son the way we would have liked but he certainly made a huge difference to our son's sleeping. We are waiting for our next trial dog so until then, cat is the only solution to being afraid of sleeping alone.

You might have already tried this but you could read him a story until he falls asleep.
A pet is a good idea or a favourite toy that he likes.

I know that when I was about that age I used to have some terrible nightmares in the end I used to get up and turn the light on and read a book until it was time to get up.

My 5-year-old non-autistic son has this same problem, except I end up sleeping in his bed with him. don't know what to do either...

I had a hard time when I was younger, too. I had a verrrry detailed routine and I would be paranoid/scared and wouldn't be able to sleep if the routine wasn't completed. I slept with a stuffed doll (which, to my delight, I found out you can still buy the same doll online - so I did, last year, and now I sleep with the same, new doll again). My parents let me sleep on the floor in their room with a blanket and pillows until I grew out of it. He WILL grow out of it. The thing is, though, it is really scary and I really feel for your son. Please don't shame him about it/if he is aware that he's a burden he wouldn't be able to do anything about it anyway/it's irrational but totally legitimate...

So yeah, my suggestions would be
1. develop a routine (mine consisted of a bath, repeating a phrase with my parent and having them turn on a night light and put lavender on stuff)
2. lavender essential oil (good, organic stuff - if it's artificial it may bother him) put it on everything - pillows, sheets, stuffed toy
3. stuffed toy ^
4. night light! also ask him if he's afraid of the dark - if the sudden darkness is what's freaking him out, try a light dimmer or just let him sleep with the lights on. can he nap during the daytime?
5. tea! I recommend Yogi bedtime tea. Kava tea is also really great but I don't know if it's recommended for children - you'll want to research that.
6. exercise and fresh air during the day!
7. yoga. yoga helped me a ton, even when i was a kid. ask him if he'd like to do a yoga video with you - maybe it could become part of his routine.

I had a hard time when I was younger, too. I had a verrrry detailed routine and I would be paranoid/scared and wouldn't be able to sleep if the routine wasn't completed. I slept with a stuffed doll (which, to my delight, I found out you can still buy the same doll online - so I did, last year, and now I sleep with the same, new doll again). My parents let me sleep on the floor in their room with a blanket and pillows until I grew out of it. He WILL grow out of it. The thing is, though, it is really scary and I really feel for your son. Please don't shame him about it/if he is aware that he's a burden he wouldn't be able to do anything about it anyway/it's irrational but totally legitimate...

So yeah, my suggestions would be
1. develop a routine (mine consisted of a bath, repeating a phrase with my parent and having them turn on a night light and put lavender on stuff)
2. lavender essential oil (good, organic stuff - if it's artificial it may bother him) put it on everything - pillows, sheets, stuffed toy
3. stuffed toy ^
4. night light! also ask him if he's afraid of the dark - if the sudden darkness is what's freaking him out, try a light dimmer or just let him sleep with the lights on. can he nap during the daytime?
5. tea! I recommend Yogi bedtime tea. Kava tea is also really great but I don't know if it's recommended for children - you'll want to research that.
6. exercise and fresh air during the day!
7. yoga. yoga helped me a ton, even when i was a kid. ask him if he'd like to do a yoga video with you - maybe it could become part of his routine.

It may sound weird but maybe a pet could help him? I know that its a total mix of logic and phantasy, but when I was a kid, our cat always was something of an anchor for me. So I felt that typical afraidness from now and then from "monster or bad things" being around, but then I always told myself, that the cat has much sharper senses then I have, and in horror films the animals always feel it before, if something bad comes along, so as long as the cat is lying around lazy purring, there CANT be nothing bad around right now. ^^

I have a few ideas. One is an extension on Sniglets's suggestion of putting a mat down on the floor of your bedroom to begin a transition. Maybe, if he get's used to this, the next step is moving him into his room and you two taking turns sleeping on the mat next to his bed. Then, maybe over the course of a few weeks, position the mat closer to the door and further from the bed until you are actually just outside of the doorway and his line of sight. In the first stage, where he's sleeping on the mat, he would adjust to sleeping without being in direct contact with one of you. In the next step, he would transition to his own room and learning to sleep without having both of you there. Then in the third stage, where you would sleep just outside of his room, he could get used to being the only person in his room. I would suggest combining this with some of the other suggestions mentioned on this thread that you think might help. I think that the baby monitor would probably make a nice extra step. He'd be alone in his room, but could always call out if he needed you, making it similar to the situation you have with the shower. I also think using either stuffed animals or a real pet is a good idea, too.

I also feel that, whatever you decide to do, you should talk to him to get him used to the idea. If you go with a multiple step process, I would suggest occasionally mention the next step after whichever one you are currently working on. If you throw it all out at once, he might get stressed and you could actually lose progress, rather than gain it. Also, let him know that, if he get's too stressed, he has the option to revert back to the previous step but set up some sort of reward system for his success in making it through each step. This way, he will feel comfortable by knowing that, although there isn't a big penalty for saying he is not ready, there will be some motivation for him to make progress.

I wish you luck with whatever you decide to do to get him comfortable with moving to his own space.