Aspergers son refusing to sleep

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Until recently my five year old son with Aspergers has been a good sleeper. Goes down at 7.30 and wakes up again any time from 6am. Recently he just will not settle down to sleep. His routine is the same bath, milk, stories. He goes to bed then spends the next four hours trotting up and down the stairs saying he can't sleep or he's got something to tell us. I have a feeling that his mind is just ticking away all the time and his brain is very busy and that's why he can't settle. Should I just put his sleep time back a bit and keep trying to settle him down and turn the lights off. Or is this part of the aspergers mind making his brain busy and active. Any tips or advice welcome. What have you tried?

My son always had issues with shutting down to go to sleep at night. At 3 y/o he would be up until 10-11 pm, too late for one so young, but nothing we did would work. Then on here last winter I read about melatonin and it changed everything for us. He now goes to bed at around 8:30 and sleeps until 7am. It really works for him and if he misses one night and we forget to give it to him, or really don't get the chance, he still will fall asleep at 8:30.

The downside of melatonin is that it doesn't work for everyone. But it's worth a try, it's either going to work or not, kwim.

I keep meaning to try melatonin. He may be a little young for it, ask a doctor.

I go to sleep after look at a computer screen which is bad. It tells the brain it is not time. Maybe you can read his story without the full light on, just have a reading lamp.

I used to have a lot of trouble falling asleep too.

Is there some kind of activity he used to do that he doesn't anymore? Like something active that had him running around a lot or something? I think the best thing to do is to have an activity that uses up all of the day's energy. The problem is that modern society isn't always active enough. I don't know if AS or NTness even has anything to do with it.

that is the opposite with me. The evenings where I do martial arts I'm even more restless trying to get to sleep.

Hmmm.. how long after doing martial arts do you go to bed?

My son is 4.5 now, I give him half a meletonin pill and he does fine. On those rare occassions when he took a nap during the day,eeek, at bedtime I will give him his half, by 9:30 if he's still up I give him the other half, but those rarely happen. The half a pill works fine.

Holy crap! Why is the automatic response to some minor behavioural difficulties to drug the child??!?!?!?!

Your child is unlikely to grow up reasonably well-adjusted if your solution to their every problem is drugs.

The children themselves need to learn the consequences of their actions, and to learn how to change their behaviours.

Dude.... Melatonin is a naturally occuring hormone that people (and other animals) already have cirulating about in their brains. It is sold as a dietary suppliment and you get it in the same area of the store that you get vitamins from. CHILL OUT!! It isn't "drugging"... unless you consider people who take vitamin C tablets to be drug addicts!!

By the way.... my little girl won't sleep either. She is up until 10 or 11 most nights and she never takes a nap. I haven't tried melatonin yet mostly because I had forgotten about it. Not to mention that she doesn't seem any worse off with her lack of sleep, either! I don't see it being a big problem for her until she starts school. Even then it might not be that big of a deal. I could never sleep either.... still can't some nights.

melatonin is a hormone, while good in the short term can promote dependance
milder things are stuff like valerian chamomile passion flower hops skull cap kava kava
5htp theanine taurine glutamine gaba magnesium glycinate

EnglishLulu


Benedryl is a drug, a drug I was advised to use to get him to go to sleep. Meletonin, not a drug and personally I'm offended by the comment that I am drugging my child into non-well adjusted adulthood.

If I could get something as foul as valarian root into my son in a positive manner, I would. But he's at that picky stage.

Personally I didn't think I suffered from sleep problems myself. I thought my sleep habits were normal, staying up 20 hrs and sleeping 6-8. Yeah because everyone does that right? When I became a SAHM and needed to be asleep by a certain time and awake by a certain time and functioning, this is when I became aware that my sleep habits were far from normal. I started suffering from bouts of insomnia, really wasn't insomnia, it was the fact that my brain couldn't turn itself off. At 39 y/o I still haven't developed the coping mechanisms to do that. I would wind up staying up half the night laying in bed tossing and turning, dealing with my 100 mile an hour brain, then finally getting to sleep and waking up 2-3 hrs later and having to chase 2 kids around all day. These bouts would last a week or two depending before tapering off, to cope I would take Nyquil or benedryl in an effort to drug myself to sleep, any sleep because after a couple days I was a wreck. When I discovered the melatonin for my son I too started taking it and I haven't had one of these bouts of insomnia yet.

My son has changed, for the better. He's not as angry, short tempered or prone to as many fits as before he started to get actual sleep. He's much more happy and even tempered, of course at the same time we started the melatonin we also started him on Omega 3-6-9 which also helped him out tremendously.

So before you start flipping out about drugs, learn what a drug is from a supplement, find out what the situation is and why before you start tossing out accusatory insults, then think long and hard before you start typing.

Valerian root "can" be some bad stuff and so can 5HTP. Valerian root has severe interactions with SSRI drugs and can cause serotonin syndrome. 5HTP converts to serotonin in your brain and can also lead to serotonin syndrome. While they are totally "natural" they are not exactly "safe". I actually had to go to the ER once while taking Valerian root.

I'm kind of confused. XD; Do you mean those quotes as quotes, or as, like, emphasis?

emphasis....

Camomile Tea works for my daughter. I give her a cup (with honey, i know, not the best thing before bed, but she doesn't have it often) about an hour to half an hour before bed, it doesn't PUT her to sleep, but it helps her to wind down and relax and she usually sleeps after that.

My son is way too calm already and it knocks him out!

Herbs can have other affects though so i don't give it to my kids every night, they have it maybe once a month, i'd give it probably every other night if i needed to or every night if bed time was consistently really bad.

Yeah.... camomile tea is nice! I actually give my daughter a bath in camomile bubble bath. It is an aromatherapy "thing". Oddly, it seems to work well. We also use one that is lavendar. Both are supposed to have soothing/sleeping properties. My oldest daughter (16) has the same problem with sleep that me and the little one have. She's allergice to a lot of herbal items and can't even drink a cup of herbal tea without going to the ER (slight exageration, but she had to go before). It is interesting how something can work so well for one and send the other into a wheezing mass of hives.