Sleep

I'm seeing some irony here, as I started this blog to post a reply to a blog that was too long for Blogger comments, and once again I find myself needing to do the same thing. Oh why won't you let us post long replies in the comments, Blogger Gods?

I just posted a lengthy reply to a question posed by Stark. Raving. Mad. Mommy. It was a question about sleep. I had some thoughtful ideas, and I hit 'enter'. Blogger told me the comment was to long but when I hit 'back' it was all gone. So I am going to attempt to re-create my reply.

Clonidine. No one likes the idea of medicating their children, at any age. However, in terms of something that helps kids sleep, this one is fairly harmless. It isn't a sleep aid or a narcotic of any kind. It's actually a blood pressure medicine, so when you take it, your blood pressure drops just a bit. So, if your blood pressure is high you will feel normal, but if your blood pressure is normal, you will feel sleepy. We noticed the effect is quite dramatic, usually about 15 minutes after the kids took it they would be out like a light (and also of note, neither boy needs it anymore, so it seemed to be something we needed to get a working sleep routine in place but not a lifelong need). We also used very very low doses which I took som comfort in. Ideally, no one needs to resort to meds to get some sleep, but the truth is that the long term effects on health from not getting sleep can be much more dangerous than any effects from this particular med.

Bedtime Snack. C tends to resist dinner, because he is too busy doing things he actually likes to do (eating not being one of them) so for a long time we were withholding a bedtime snack to 'teach' him that he had to eat at dinner. However, a hungry brain is an anxious brain, which can lead to inability to sleep or incredibly light sleep. And when we were honest with ourselves, he wasn't 'learning' anything about actually eating at dinner by going to bed hungry. So we decided to let him have a bedtime snack. And a big one. It's often cheese, which we were told buy our dentist will not cause cavities so is ok for him to eat after brushing his teeth. Incidentally, our other son (not on the spectrum, but with ADHD) was prone to night terrors, where he would wake up screaming that he saw a spider or someone at his window and not calm for a hour or so. The doctor made the same recommendation - have a snack by his bedside table, so that if he finds he is sleeping fitfully he can eat - then he will fall into a deeper sleep and not have the night anxiety. It worked like a charm.

Heavy Blankets. Sadly the 'official' weighted blankets are expensive, and I am crafty but no the fabric kind of crafty so I can't make one myself We have an old heavy afghan that we put on top of C's duvet and it really weighs it down. Sadly we have to do this year round, so he has lots of hot nights in the summer, but if we don't he can't rest. I'll have to investigate a lightweight blanket for summer months.

Give In. I know this is a tough one. We are told again and again that consistency is important, to be on the lookout for coercive process, blah blah blah. We are also terrified that what we do today will haunt us in 15 or 20 years. But the bottom line is, sometimes we just have to climb into bed with C. This is rare, now, though it used to happen several times a week (it got better, not worse, when we gave in, which is actually counter to what we thought would happen) and now I think it happens once a month or once every two months. It's usually because something very anxiety provoking is happening or he is sick or very excited about something (Christmas was an issue.) One of us getting into bed with him when he just can't settle helps him get into a deep sleep, and we both prefer that to him getting into our bed.

The more successful nights we had, the less we relied on these things. I know there is more and more research in child-rearing in general that by helping kids calm down, they learn what it is to feel calm and they learn how to calm themselves (as opposed to the old school idea that if we calm them they never learn to calm themselves ... old school cry-it--out kind of theories.) This has certainly proven true for us, and not just for sleep. The more things we can put into place to take the anxiety out of a situation for C., and to put a strong memory of our presence into the situation, the more he is able to do these things on his own. So we don't use the meds anymore, and we don't end up in his bed very often but we do understand that sometimes he just really needs extra support and we don't fight him on that. We are all getting much more sleep that way.

I don't mean for any of this to sound like we have it 'all figured out' because I could list for days the routines we need to work on. Bedtime itself is one of them - how I'd LOVE for C to go to bed on his own - but these are things that have worked for getting us through the night successfully. Hope it helps some.