Weird Sleep Patterns for a 3-YO

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My son has been diagnosed with PDD-NOS. He usually stays awake until after 9 pm, no matter what time we put him to bed. He wakes up between 5:30 and 6 am. We try to get him to nap in the early afternoon but he rarely falls asleep.

Then he occasionally has days like yesterday, when he falls asleep at 4 pm and stays asleep all night.

Is he getting enough sleep?

Lots of kids on the spectrum have unusual sleep patters. My son (age 4) has the sleep patters of an adult - he will go to sleep any time from 10 to midnight but he'll sleep the night and usaully wake up around 7 or 8.

My daughter has always been like that too, she would just not be tired and even after putting her to bed she would still be chatting for an hour and lining her toys up! Now shes at school she goes to bed a bit earlier but still chats for a while. She cut out day time naps at about 18mths and was always funny about napping. Her mind is always racing so she cant switch off and finds it hard to relax.

I always thought this was similar to my sleep pattern, I prefer to sleep later and get up late, not great in the mornings

My mother says that I never slept through the night until I was 4. And I never needed naps.

Is he getting enough sleep? Well, probably not, but what can you do? Apart from all the usual sleep well routines (wind down time, warm milk, stories, active days, cool dark room etc...) and then cross your fingers. My 4.5 yr old takes a long time to wind down too and wakes at least twice a night, calling out or shouting in his sleep at other times and generally restless. Then up whenever the birds start and it's getting light. I don't think he gets enough sleep either and I've always thought he just has too many thoughts in his mind he can't 'switch off'. My eldest takes medication to help him sleep, he was worse (<5hrs a night)! His behaviour and mood has improved a ton since he started getting a good and restful 8-10 hrs sleep/night.
I am trying all the usual calming type things before bed for my little one, hoping his body starts to relax and get in to better sleep patterns. If I can't see his lack of sleep having a very obvious negative effect on his behaviour, I won't be going down the medication path for him, at the moment he does the same as your son, ie. crashes when he is obviously really tired and catches up a bit.
Good luck, I'll be hoping for restful sleep for all zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz............

We have had many issues with this too. My son stopped taking naps very early. As long as I can remember he (as an infant, mind you) would not go to sleep until 11 PM. We had a heck of a time getting him to sleep before that. Even now, no matter what his bedtime is, he does not really fall asleep until 9:00 PM, which is about an hour later than I 'd like. That is after working on it.

My youngest daughter, aged seven, has these sleep issues too. She can't rest her mind from thinking at night when she goes to bed, she takes ages to go to sleep (midnight is not unusual) and drives us mad calling down the stairs constantly with all her niggling worries (which are really trivial things that could wait until the next day but she simply has to get them out no matter what). She also wakes quite early despite the late night. I let her read to try and sleep but it doesn't help. She will lay there remembering things which are sometimes from really long ago, (she has a really excellent memory) and calling out to ask if the things were OK etc. It's pretty stressful to deal with, and if we've had a bad day with her behaviour wise it's a nightmare to get this at night too.

I'm not a parent myself, but would like to be.

By the time I could tell time, which was about at age 5, my bedtime was 9:00 PM. It would frequently be 10:00 PM or later before I actually fell asleep, so getting only as much sleep as an adult (8 hours) was not unusual. I rarely took naps, and in fact I'm not sure I ever truly needed more than 8 hours from age 4 onwards!

Both of mine hard to get to sleep.

DD2.5 is the worst. She NEEDS to be in bed and asleep by 8pm, but that rarely happens. She fights the whole process tooth and nail. DD5 (dxed AS) doesn't fight the process (most of the time), but has a hard time falling asleep. I would say most nights they are actually in bed by and quiet by 8:30-8:45 and asleep by 9:30-10pm. The are clearly tired during the day, both of them. I would love to put them to bed sooner, however I work full time. That being said, most nights we aren't all home until 6pm. Then, we have to have dinner, and usually a bath. It's nice if we spent a little time together too. So it would be a tall order to start putting them to bed at 730pm, but some nights I do it becuase it's obvious they are both over tired... DD5 doesn't nap anymore, but could probably use it. DD2.5 fights naps now (big time, even at daycare) but DEFINATELY still needs them.

I am starting to wonder if DD2.5 is on the spectrum too. She is very different from dd5, but has a lot of red flags. It's hard to get anyone to give a crap if the child speaks at all. She talks, but really barely. She gets mad about the most random stuff too... She is a very frustrating child. I'm trying to get her an evaluation but it's a longer process this time because I'm taking her to a different place because she is younger...

Given my own sleep issues, both in childhood and currently, I would say putting a kid to bed earlier because he/she is behind on sleep is a BAD idea. It's even more strain on the sleep clock if the kid isn't falling asleep until much later, and basically hours out of the day lost to lying in bed and not sleeping. Perhaps naps instead? Also, keeping the light low in the final few hours before bedtime, and high in the morning, can help, because the human sleep clock gets its cues mostly from dark and light.