Parenting questions for my 3 yo.

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My 3 yo (will be 4 in Jan) ASD son is once again keeping me on my toes. I have a few parenting questions that I need some help with. I saved them up into one big post. Thanks in advance for your help.

1) One to Three times during the night, he leaves his bed and comes into mine. His 1 yo sister is usually asleep between DH and I and he insists that he must snuggle up with me. If I am too tired, I wont notice until a couple hours later when I discover him cuddled up to me. If I do notice, either I or his father will take him to his own bed. If we are desperate, we will put him in his brother's bed. This has turned to a regular routine and we are dead tired. Is there anything you can think of to help break this behavior?

2) He has decided to either spit or lick the books that he or his brother is reading. His borther (is NT and 6) is completely disgusted with him. I know this is socially not accepted so we try to dissuade him from doing this by telling him that if he does it, he will have to put the book away. When we put the book away, he cries and ask for the book again. I will usually give him the book 2 or 3 times after that but he will still spit on and lick the pages. A few times I have completely taken the book away but giving it back to him the next day when he asks for it. He will then repeat the process. All the while, he is laughing as if it is a joke.

3) He likes to pull his shirt to the side exposing his shoulder. He will then rub his shoulder. I have no issues with that, only, now he is trying to do it to his brother and his brother is not having it so, that is causing arguments between him an d his brother. How do I explain to him that he cannot do that to his brother?

4) He will take toys his sister is playing with and then try to give her another toy. She gets very upset when he does this. How do you teach a child to share after you spent so much time working on the concept of "mine"?

This will be harsh sounding (maybe)

When I was a kid and my Dad worked as a fisherman (so gone for several days at a time), I used to sleep in my mom's bed. Eventually it got to the point where they wanted me to stop doing that, and my psychologist told them to put a lock on there because nothing else worked (it was part of my routine by then). Then spent several nights of me melt-downing outside their door, and they had no choice but to ignore me (unless he gets violent toward himself or something--I was just screaming). It might not sound "nice", but I KNOW it was the only way they were going to stop me. And it wasn't traumatizing. I was older than your son, and I don't even remember it, so it wasn't THAT big of a deal.

The other ones I don't know about....

my son sleeps in our bed. Its just the only way we are all getting a good nights sleep. He is 7 and has been in our bed since he is about 4.

SPeaking of which, I am going to put him to bed now...be back with more repsonses.

We put a fold-out couch in my son's room, when he came to us, one of us would walk him back to bed and stay with him (the couch was there so we could get a good night's sleep there if we needed to.) He did eventually sleep on his own but it took a long time.

Thanks so much for your detailed questions and suggestions. My answers are below bolded.

You said his sister is usually asleep with you, already. I was wondering if you choose to have her sleep with you (I am not trying to cause controversy here. I just want to fully understand the situation). Did you allow your son to sleep with you until he was older as well? Did he sleep with you until she was born? Is there possibly some jealousy there?

My son slept part of the night in our bed up until about 3 months before his sister was born. After that, it was too uncomfortable to have him in the bed. We moved his crib to the room with his brother. When his sister was born she slept in her basinet (which he was territorial about). A couple months later, we put her in a totally different crib (which she is still in). Once I tried to wean her, she resisted and started nursing a lot in the night. She would cry at night and wake her brothers, so I had to give in so the house could get some rest. So, now she sleeps the first half of the night in her crib and the second half, in our bed. Very confusing, I know.

Do you stay with him until he falls asleep? Perhaps he wakes up and only knows how to go back to sleep with you there? Does he know how to put himself back to sleep?

We put him to bed fully awake but tired. He knows how to put himself to sleep. When we put him back to bed, he doesn't resist anymore and goes right to sleep.
Will he sleep on a pallet or cot in the room if it is there, so if he wakes up, he can go to the pallet/cot to sleep and not disrupt your sleep? If he is in the room, he needs to be cuddling with me. He would not stay on another bed, cot, etc in the room.

Could you put an alarm (one that beeps when you open the door) on the door to your bedroom so you hear him come in and he never makes it to your bed. Him getting to sleep sometimes without you noticing is a strong reinforcer to keep trying. One of the most persistant reinforcement patterns is the random ones.

His foot dragging on the floor wakes me up when he comes into the room nowadays. I think my body has started anticipating him coming in the room. That's probably because I am not sleeping deeply anymore.

Could you get a bigger bed - like a California King?

Unfortunately my children sleep very "bad". They will turn sideways and jab you in the ribs with their tiny pointy toes. They will crawl all over you and try to crawl off the bed so you constantly have to hold on to a leg or an arm, which means you are not sleeping deeply. We only sleep ok when no one is in the bed with us. We haven't had an empty bed in a while though.

Has he had a sleep evaluation to see if there is a sleep disorder?

No, we haven't done that as yet. It's been a couple months since this has been going on. I should look into that though.

As for the crying it out. This never worked for my son with AS, although it worked fine with my NT daughter. I don't know how that would work for your son.

When my son woke up in the middle of the night up to about age 4, it worked better for my husband to put him back to bed. My husband would say. "It's still night. It's dark outside. When it's night it's time to be in bed. Get in bed." And for some reason, that worked. It never worked for me.

My son will go to bed when either one of us puts him to bed, now. Before, he would resist, but now she just seems to accept it and goes to bed. I don't know if this is an improvement, or if he is establishing a routine.

Don't give up. Be creative. Find something that works for your family even if the rest of the NT world thinks its odd or different. Its worth your sanity during the day to have a good nights sleep.

I know this will be very disruptive, so you may not want to got his route but...

Maybe if you need to sleep with the little one, your husband could something to sleep on in the boys' room, so that he is in there with them. It might get him used to staying in his own bed, so that he makes it a habit.

I only say this because when our son transitioned into his own room (made easy by the fact that we moved) I did sleep in his room next to his bed for awhile until I was confident he would stay there. It seemed to work for us.

I do agree that there is probably some jealousy going on there, too. I bet he feels a little displaced. Am alternative might be to make some goal ,he can earn, maybe a special time with you that he does not have to share with siblings, if he can stay in his own bed for a week.

Thanks so much for your replies.

Last night DH and I slept downstairs on the sofa. I forgot to turn off the light and open the door in the boys room. When we went upstairs, my 3 yo was snug in his bed. If he woke up, either the light being on or the door being closed prevented him from leaving his bed. We will keep experimenting to see if we can find what kept him in his bed.

As for the licking of the book, Eureka-C, I think you may he on to something about him not understanding that I am not happy with him doing it. He can ready my face for extreme emotions (happy, sad, surprised, crying, etc) but if I don't think I was showing him any extreme emotion. All he knew was that I sad "no". Unfortunately, Daddy's no means more than mine, so I have to work harder for ALL of my children to understand my "NO".

He will spit on the floor when he is angry and has already learned that when he spits on the floor, he will have to wipe it up (which he seems happy enough to do). Maybe the matter of fact attitude I have is preventing him from understanding how inappropriate it is.

As for impulse control, my son has started checking to see where I am before he does something he knows I don't want him to do. He will also run to me laughing (he laughs A LOT) when I catch him doing things that he knows I don't want him to do.

I will definitely have his brother tell him he is not going to read to him because he spits on his book. My boys gravitate towards each other, so even if I told his brother to stay away while reading, it wouldn't work. I do like the plan of taking away the book for the day, because I do think my son has some impulse control (not as much as he should have though, for his age).

I don't think in this case my son is being naughty. I think he just doesn't understand socially appropriate behaviors. We are trying to work on him in that regards and funny, his big brother, with his bluntness, has been helping a lot.

I wonder if you could make a sign that says "no" and make sure that when either you or your husband say no, you point to it? This might help him understand you want the same thing from him.

I am one of those people who believes that human beings weren't really designed to sleep alone, for thousands of years doing so was not practical, which means your young son is just giving into his natural instincts.

In my world, you accommodate those instincts in whatever creative way you have to that allows the most people to get the most sleep. For us, that meant that after she turned 4 or so I would take my daughter back to her own bed and crawl in with her there.

Eventually, they grow into a phase of wanting to be alone. I'm all for letting that happen on its own. If you can without being exhausted. Every parenting decision is a balancing of needs, yours included.