Nightime saftey

Post Reply New Topic

Hi, new here.

I have a three year old son with autism and developmental delays. He is a wonderful little guy but keeping him safe at night is proving problematic. He can be a little destructive if left to his own devices. He has broken all the closet doors, dresser drawers, decimated the radiator and gnawed away at the wood work around the divided light windows in his room. I have real concerns about him loosening a pane of glass and cutting himself. We have tried a bed tent with him but he ripped through all the screening and climbed right out. Currently we have a peapod tent inside a bed tent both heavily duct taped to try to keep him safe and contained. This system is simply not working and we do not know what to do.

We took him to the pediatrician this morning for a developmental check up and when we told her our concerns her first (and only) suggestion, without pause, was medication . This after we had finished discussing all the progress he has been making lately. Needless to say I walked out of that appointment demoralized and in the market for a new pediatrician.

Has anyone else dealt with this type of safety issue? I struggle with how to "Ted" proof his room adequately.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

Jen

been there done that, had the tent ect, our child bounced in the bed so hard the bottom fell through and they crawled out that way, somehow unharmed- thankfully.

what we had to do was to uber child proof the room and put up not one, but two baby gates at the door, one on top of the other. toys, anything that could be a danger or distraction had to be stored in the living room or another room. Think simple, simple, simple with all stimuli in another place. maybe even the gates would be seen only as another challenge for him to conquer, from the sounds of it. Look at the room in the same way you might have when he first started to crawl, and make it safe all the way to that level. You might need to invest in a window gaurd like is sold for second story child's rooms. If window treatments continue to be an issue you could treat the windows with tinting, or tacky, I know- but the peel and stick variety. (just don't let him see you stick it on or he'll likely be chanllenged to peel it off) Also consider a cal-mag or magnesum supplement in the evenings, to help him be ready for sleep. Also all the reccomendations you prob already know for routine at bed, lack of rowdy or stimulating activity in evenings ect.

if your child has any ability to "earn" awards such as something nice the next morning when a night has gone by without incident, I'd reccomend that. maybe not now, but as he gets older. a fave breakfast, or show in the morning, a prize box of trinkets, whatever works.

im afraid my only other solution is co-sleeping but as a fellow parent I can see many reasons why you might not want to do this, the least of which is you need some adult time at the end of it all to restore for another go round the next day.

keep looking for more supportive ped!

Last edited by OhNowIGetIt on 20 Apr 2011, 8:45 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Wow - We went through that, but the tent worked.

Without knowing the layout of your house, I can't give suggestions, but I can empathize. The time I saw 18 month DS walking down a path looking for the creek, was when we decided to take keeping him in seriously. That said, he didn't mess with things in the house, he mostly tried to get out.

They say that kids on the spectrum are melatonin deficient, so our doc recommended he take melatonin. Since that is a naturally occuring substance, and the melatonin is available over the counter, we decided to try it. It has worked wonders. DS now usually sleeps through the night. He takes 1.5 mg. A typical dose is at least 3 mg, he doesnt need that much.

this begs the question, how is he being left to his own devices? is he put to bed and then left alone and awake in his room? does all this damage occur when he is suppose to be going to sleep?

if the answers to those last two questions are yes, then the problem is probably not with the destruction but with the being left alone, and the solution to that is not to leave him alone in his room while awake.

we had serious problems with getting our now 5 yr old autie to sleep when he was 3-4 yrs old. we would put him and his brother to bed in their shared room, and have to go back again and again and again to get him to lay back down. he would be up and getting into his toys, throwing his clothes out of the dresser, often making a mess or bouncing all around like a jumping bean. he often would wake or keep his brother up, and since this was going on until 12 or 1 am, he himself wasnt getting nearly enough sleep.

for our son, he has an overactive mind that simply doesnt shut down to allow him to go to sleep. that was a very important realization, that it wasnt something he was in control of. once we were able to develop a method of getting him to go to sleep at night, there was a lot fewer problems with waking brother or making a mess. in our case the solution does indeed involve co-sleeping and even then can on some nights take up to 2 hours before he is asleep, due to his unique needs and challenges.

this may not be the case with your son and i may be totally off base, but it wouldnt surprise me if it was accurate. sleep issues are a pretty common problem with autistics, the aspie and two auties in my house all have bedtime issues, each one different than the others. it can be very difficult for autistics to get and stay asleep, and an overtired 3 yr old left alone and unable to get to sleep could easily cause a lot of destruction.

I agree with options on making the whole room the sleeping place with not much to get into left in the room. Use a very low or platform bed so he can't collapse it. Put the window safety gates that are used for high-rises on the windows etc. Ultimately that's what we did with my son (now 16, still doesn't stay/sleep in his room most days, but we let him wander now that he is no longer destructive to self/house).

There is also a really high railed bed with an optional wood slat top called model Hannah by Kayserbettenus that you could look at as another option. I think I might have tried that one if I had seen it when my son was smaller.

I'm going to have to defend your doctor. At least two medications are prescribed and FDA approved in the use of autistic children with violent of destructive behaviour. I don't advocate medicating three year olds but if you're having the duct tape things and he's destructing doors, well, that's not a little destructive. That is VERY problematic.

But I think there are some other options to try first. Melatonin and calcium magneisum, epsom salt. Hell, I need these just to sleep. Food dyes can cause hyperactivity, make sure there this can't be helped with a diet switch. This is assuming it's a hyperactivity problem, a problem with settling down. Is he destructive during the day too? Or does he not like to be left alone?

I have an autistic sister who still needs somebody to sleep with her. She used to not sleep in her room or bed at all. When I was younger I would not sleep alone until I was like 10. I still have a lot of sleeping problems. Luckily I've never been the type to wander off once i"ve got to bed, and neither is my sibling.

I almost said the mattress/ boxspring or just matt. on the floor thing, had it as an afterthought.

We almost had to do this. As it was the platform type twin bed w. drawers under/ built in we were putting child down in after the crib was wrecked- got drawers broken ect. Many things were broken that yr! But now we have a non-destructive 10 yro who made it through, without meds. Supplements, diet changes (food dyes brought destructive behavior) but not drugs.

best wishes

My son is almost 3 and autistic as well, but not destructive (even though he did manage to break the neck of an $800 guitar, I think that was his father's fault for leaving it out ) .... We have a low lying toddler bed and a gate across his door to keep him in at night, I thought we would have to take the tent route too when we took him out of the crib but just baby-proofing the room, gating it off and essentially just making the area one big crib has worked for us ... I doubt it would be as good if my son was self-injurous or good at climbing. There is a TV in his room (this has saved my sanity) but it's in an alcove and gated off as well ... sometimes my son has night terrors and like magic if I put on one of his favorite shows with in minutes he wakes up in good spirits. When we want to open a window a baby gate goes in there too. I do leave safe toys in his room because I know that with or without distractions in his room he's still going to stay up half the night and I figure he may as well be happy and entertained while he's at it, if he were bored he'd definitely scream all night long and be more likely to try and destroy things.

There has to be some way to cover whatever part of the window that is accessible to him completely with a piece of hard clear plastic to keep him safe if it looks like he's going to break the window. I wonder what we'll do too when my son is bigger and figures out he can climb over the gates.

I agree about the melatonin. You should go to your local health store to see if they have drops that come in kid friendly flavours. If they only have drops for adults, put a third of the regular dose into his pop or juice or whatever it is he drinks before bed.

Thanks all for the advice, you have given me a lot to think about!!

I probably didn't explain well - my son isn't violent and his destruction isn't out of anger. He is just very, very tough on his environment. I hesitate to medicate him because I am afraid it will hurt the progress he is making of late (the doctor suggested sleeping pills). The depressing thing is that he likes his bed tent, will initiate nap time or bed time when he is tired, but if he wakens and we don't realize it fast enough, he will "escape" and at that point isn't safe. Co-sleeping presents the same issue, if we don't realize he woke up he can get into trouble pretty quickly. Plus we need to be able to sleep in order to be able to deal with our little energizer bunny during the day.

I will try to see if we can further Ted proof the room and look into some sleep training techniques. Hopefully we can find a developmental pediatrician that can help guide us.

Hi, I'm very new here too, so I'm going to give my first post to your topic.

I have a 5 year old son who has Down Syndrome and Autism(on the waiting list for a DX). He is severely delayed(even by Down Syndrome standards), non-verbal, and a wakeful sleeper. A few weeks ago I went in to get him up, and when I opened his bedroom door, he was in the floor playing. My son sleeps in a crib(he's the size of a 3 year old), so imagine my horror to find him in the floor. Something had to be done immediately, or at least by 8 PM!! haha!!

It's going to sound a little off the wall, but my husband and I zip-tied baby gates to the edges of his crib. We set them at about 6 inches higher than the top crib rail, to ensure that he couldn't get his leg over the top to hoist himself out, and i can still lower the rail to put him in the bed at night. I called his insurance that day to put in a request for a Sleepsafer bed. I got a prescription for the bed, but now I have to do that whole Letter of medical necessity B.S.
It's very scary to have a child so small and so delayed, and so mobile.

I'm not sure if they allow links in here, but the bed is called the Sleepsafer by Sleepsafe beds. They are VERY expensive though, so fair warning. The one I picked out has no bells and whistles and still costs about $5000.

I work at a group home for Mary Cariola Children's Center and one of the strategies we use is to keep the bedrooms empty apart from the bed (which is bolted to the wall). All of the person's clothing, toys, and other belongings are stored in their room in a locked closet. This way, even though we have overnight staff working, if the person wakes up in the middle of the night he won't be able to destroy his belongings or have anything loose laying around that could be harmful in an accident. With this set-up the only 'loose' objects in the room are the sheets and the mattress.

Instead of having posters taped to the wall you can have a mural painted. Hanging pictures in frames can be screwed into the wall and use shatterproof plexiglass in frames/windows rather than typical glass.

Hope that helps!
- Paul