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PARENTING TIPS: Sleeping & Waking
Working on Family Sleep Needs
Why is our child with Autism still waking us up all night?
We all suffer, if any one of us does not get enough sleep.In a family-centered Autism practice approach this issue must be dealt with well before other kinds of daylight Autism intervention training, plans, or programs are safe to even consider, let alone to start. This is because such interventions always put family members under new demands, and we may be near the end of their ropes if we have not gotten enough sleep each night--for years. Sleep deprived parents are at numerous and great risks of harm by chronic illness, serious injury to themselves and others, and even death. No kidding. Parents who are sleep deprived (far beyond the typical few months of what were hormonally supported neonate night feedings) are at serious risk of errors in judgment, and very serious long term stress-related chronic mental health and physical conditions. In order to treat the sleepless child with Autism, in a sleep deprived family, we must first get the parents enough sleep immediately-- at the very least, four hours per night every night, quickly getting back to eight hours per night everynight ASAP. This is because, to even begin intervention we have to get folks to accurately identify the levels of sleep each family member is getting, and to understand and accept that everyone is at risk, if any one member is not getting the sleep they need. Sleep deprived families will not do this. They have gone from neonate sleep-loss years into long term sleep denied patterns--and cannot help themselves. We may all have fallen into disordered sleep, due to not maturing into sleep skills at the typical infant age range. Then, they LEARNED to walk and get out of bed and the family begins to adjust to a big infant on wheels 24/7. Yet, we blame the person with Autism for keeping us up, when the child with Autism may need us to teach them how to first LEARN how to stay in bed and stay asleep. It is a vicious cycle must be broken and replaced with full night sleep patterns and functional family routines:
•The first step must be to get nighttime respite care and family sleep skills training for the parents and siblings.
•Next eliminate all naps for the child, across home and school, and replace with mutual child and parent lay-down fully awake quiet rest breaks at 10AM and 2PM.
•Increase later afternoon aerobic exercise for everyone.
•No eating and drinking at least 2-4 hours before bed.
•Have positive, quieter family time routines before bed.
•Two adults, each on 4 hrs. of sleep, work on sleep skills training shifts. Hand the child a “go to bed” cue (from a bucket of cues) to drop in a basket by their bed. Redirect them to bed, with no talk or cuddles. It works like magic.
A WAKE UP CALL
Why won’t my very young child, or teen, with Autism ever wake up in time for daycare or school?
Some families are sleep deprived by children with Autism’s sleep patterns, and some children with Autism are sleep disrupted by adults who underestimate their needs for the maturing sleep levels, we all need to cope with western culture schedules, and to meet the rest needs of a brain with Autism--which can be great.
•Later active play and bedtimes of parents, who need only eight hours of sleep, may not let our children get to bed early enough. Young children with Autism need at least 12 hours of sleep. Yes!
A child who MUST get up at 7AM may NEED to go to bed at 7PM!
•Both under- and over-sleeping kids can benefit from the sleep skills list at the left (i.e., naps during the day, after the first to third year of life, reduce the quality and quantity of sleep and make us groggy upon waking. •Provide stable sleep/wake times.
•Darken rooms an hour before bedtime and have a timer turn
on lights an hour before waking. •Teens may not only need more sleep than adults, but studies show they need to get up later, and stay up later, than adults.
Teens with even moderate to severe Autism can be set up on bed time schedule systems to put themselves to bed and to get up reliably. NO KIDDING--they can.
•Undo stresses at home or school are hard for folks with Autism to understand and cope with well.
Situational depression, and other biological form of depression, can disrupt sleep into heavier or lighter forms that make getting to sleep or waking up much harder. Learn about depression and relatd sleep issues, if you are concerned about any person’s sleep patterns. Using best sleep practices using developmental or behavioral Autism interventions can help screen out sleep skills training problems, from other causes and forms of sleep loss.
Sweet dreams everyone! ZZZZZZ
Note: these articles were originally published with the author's permission in the The Net Journal of the Autism Society of Oregon. Winter 2004 Issue. Sharone Lee, Editor and Author. They have been returned to their home at Threshold, but have been kept in our public access pages for all our parent's use.
You may send in additional questions on this topic for us to answer.
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