sleep problems

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Does your AS child have sleep problems, i.e. difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, sleeping in a bed, etc?

son is on sleep meds now, but had previously spent several years only getting 3-4 hours of sleep per night. he'd pace in his room adn clean...much of his days wre spent in a highly agitated state....much better now, though. with the meds he seems to average around 7 hours of sleep per night

Two things have worked better for us than any meds -
1 - Calcium (with magnesium) 1 hour before bedtime. Search online for proper dosages.
2 - Deep breathing (yes, it works!) When you're trying to go to sleep, breath in to the count of 8 or 10, hold it for 4, then breath out to the count of 8 or 10. Keep this up for about 30 breaths (or you may fall asleep before you get to that . . . ).
There is real science behind both of these methods.

rosacoke~ i'm sure they both work...but nothing works unless you can get your kid to try.

Chris has taken to reading before sleep which means he gets less sleep than he used too and is sometimes harder to get up in the morning. It seems like he needs that extra time to relax. We will probably need to set a timer for reading time during the school year.

Katherine

we have done melotonin in the past but found out the side effect could be growth. i guess from what I understand it has a hormone in it that effects growth in children. i know I have had this diuscussion before. so many parents on here are not pro meds and other than my sons ADD meds this is all i gave him. until recently we have been using clonidine. deep breathing would never work for my son. It would make him go off the deep end. basically it would effect one of his senses and then he would hyper venelate. some kids are just not easy to get them to try anything new.. when we started on the clonedine Ryan was insistent that it would not allow him to sleep.. and truthfully I have not seen the greatest effect for him. he goes to sleep a bit better. i really think its something he will battle for the rest of his life. hopefully I am wrong but maybe thing will turn around in the teenage years when parents say all their teen does is SLEEP!

I said "moderate" but nowadays, I'd consider his sleep patterns a minor problem. He started waking up in the night at 10 months old. But it didn't get really bad until he was out of the crib, then he wouldn't sleep on his own at all. We had to hold him down for naps and I had to "sleep" at his side at night. That included sitting as close to him as possible and putting my head next to his and pretending to sleep. I'd meditate on trains (if it was my husband's turn, he'd do reiki) and if I could do that, he'd fall asleep. He still would get up w/in a few hours to sleep with mom and dad though.
Now we just read him his story and he goes to sleep himself. He forces himself to. Though within the past 3 months he has kept his light on because he thinks the darkness gives him nightmares.
He still gets up just about every midnight or early morning to sleep with mom and dad. We don't prevent him unless it's really early for him like 11pm.
We have been doing the same night "bed routine" since he was a baby. no drugs.

Hah!
My parents tried the deep breathing method with me as a kid. It didn't work at all, and they blamed my stubbornness for it. Well, here's the real reason. They sounded like drill sargeants when they were "trying" this technique on me. When it didn't work, guess whose fault was it?:roll: To this day, I refuse to do yoga, pilates, or any such thing, because of the "deep breathing" it uses.

We have had intermittent sleep problems for a very long time. During the pre-school years, we just thought it was part of the age and the usual security/anxiety thing. But it didn't stop and he's a busy sleeper.

His room was always next to us until we moved here, now his room is directly above ours. He wouldn't sleep up there for long until he we pointed out the register was a direct link to us - we weren't next to him, but right under him.

Exercise helps - if we get out walking, biking, swimming, etc. it helps him to have a better night's sleep. Anxiety will definitely mess up his sleep and he'll be back on the couch in the room next to ours if he's had a rough day. Ever since he was little, he and dad would read together before bed and now it's his routine. We always make sure he gets to bed in time to have some reading time (about 30 minutes).

Instead of deep breathing, we encourage him to close his eyes and think about something he enjoys so he can start dreaming about it once he's asleep. The deep breathing that we tried seemed to give him the chance to really focus on whatever was bothering him and would agitate him. If he hasn't had enough exercise or if he's had a bad day, he will still wake up in the middle of the night and then dad has to get him settled on the couch.

My son is 8 and has SEVERE issues with falling asleep and staying that way. He says he cannot turn his head off and that it feels like he always has to move his legs. I have heard about the weighted blankets, any ideas about that? He is on Seroquel and Lamictal. He has beed diagnosed with AS, OCD and bi-polar.
HELP! I need sleep.

My son sleeps well once he falls asleep.... He too says he cant turn off his brain. I got a cd of a motivational speaker that actually goes through a mind relaxation routine. Sometimes my son has to repeat it a few times, but mostly it works. We've tried a waterfall in his room, reading to him until I cant keep my eyes open LOL and letting him watch tv until he falls asleep (which does not work because he will watch tv until the wee hours).

son and hubby both have weighted blankets. hubby will sleep with his, and says he enjoys the feeling of the weight on him~says it calms him down. son won't sleep with his, but will wrap himself in it when he is feeling overwhelmed. when son was little (and we didn't know about AS), he'd listen to music and read books in bed.

I find that DS's sleep issues go in cycles. Sometimes it's great, other times it's not. For a few months he would only sleep under his bed (he has mini-loft bed...it's about 4 ft off the ground) so we got him an air mattress to sleep on. Then that didn't work any longer and he wanted to be back on top of the bed again. His biggest issue was missing me when he was trying to fall asleep so now I sit outside his bedroom until he falls asleep (15 mins) and that has solved the problem. He has a little musical toy in his bed with him so if he wakes up at night (or rather, if his baby sister wakes him up when she cries ), he'll turn that one and go right back to sleep.

He very rarely gets out of bed at night unless he's had a nightmare.

We also have to stick the same routine every night. Toilet, teeth, then into bed. I read him a story, draw lightly on his back, followed by back scratches, then a backrub. He relaxes quickly.

I replied that my son had severe sleep issues, but truthfully, now that he is a teen, it is much better. A long time ago, I gave up worrying about his lack of sleep. I would go to bed and let him do as he wished, as long as he didn't wake me up. He usually goes to sleep around 1 or 2 AM and then wakes up for a snack during the night. I think sometimes he is awake until 3 or 4 and eats before he goes to sleep. The difference now that he is a teen is that he will stay sleeping half the day if I let him. He just started regular school after being homeschooled for years and he now has to wake up at 6 AM. He went to bed at 10 the first night and 1 the second. On the third night he was asleep by 9 PM, but woke for a snack sometime during the night. I just always thought about something I once read or heard about Bill Gates only needing 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night and I figured that I just had one of "those" kids. It didn't seem to make any sense for me to be crabby and miserable trying to get him to go to sleep at a normal time.

SandySue, you're one of the best parents I've seen on WrongPlanet. I really wish mine were like that. Instead, they had a "sleep at all costs" attitude. They'd tell me to go to bed when I'm wide awake, and I didn't comply, punishment was happily given out. So once in bed, I'd lie wide awake for hours, afraid to step outside my room, fearing a punishment for "not sleeping when told". As I got a little older, they stopped punishing me for not being asleep, but they weren't nice about it either. This problem continued until I started high school, where I could use the "I was studying" excuse for staying up.

<10 years later>
Now on weekends, it's not uncommon for me to go to sleep as late (or is it early) as 5:00 AM, the time I used to always wake up as a kid. I spend a lot of time out with my friends, and since we're all night owls, we all hang out late at night. I'm sure you all see the irony here. The repressed desire to stay up at night is coming back with a vengence. Except that now, my parents can't just tell me to go to sleep when told, and as a result, I switch over to the schedule that was deep inside me all my childhood. Anyone else experience this?