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Any tips on surviving long term with very limited sleep?

8 replies

Jimjams2 · 21/01/2007 09:38

DS1 has decided to stop sleeping, Most days he's up from 3am at the latest. ON a bad day he's up from 1am. We put him back in his room, but he can get out now. He usually stays in his room for a while (singing quite loudly), but will get up again after an hour or s. If we bring him into bed he's fidgity (he's 7 as well so takes up loads of space) and hops around in and out of bed.

He's been like this for over a month now, and its starting to get a bit tiring to put it mildly. I'm sure he will flip back to sleeping properly at some stage, but god knows when.

Does anyone use relaxation or meditation techniques or anything? At the moment I find I tend to drop off when I'm sat down waiting for the school bus to bring him back, which is embarrassing- although the 10/15 mins then does help. Can't go to bed early as I work in the evenings.

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NbgsYellowFeathers · 21/01/2007 09:40

Our dd has just come out of doing this. We put her music on in her room and she just laid in bed listening to it and eventually went back off to sleep. She'd also sleep till quite late in the morning too because of the sleep she missed out on through the night.

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Jimjams2 · 21/01/2007 09:44

He just won't go back to sleep. Doesn't seem to need to. School are trying to tire him out (long walks), they're also trying to relax him (hydrotherapy) but no change. TBH he doesn't seem tired. T hey've said he's fine at school, not tired at all. He just seems to need half the sleep he needed in November. I don't think there's much we can do with him (although I have asked social services for an OT assessment to see about keeping him in his room- but that will take at least a year I would imagine). I think we need to learn to cope with less sleep.

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NbgsYellowFeathers · 21/01/2007 09:48

Am I right in thinking he has special needs?
I could ask my dh for some tips as he works in a respite home for children with special needs and some of the children dont do sleep either

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Jimjams2 · 21/01/2007 09:51

He's severely autistic. It's part of the condition really and I know we've been lucky to get this far without long stretches of this (always had up for 2 hours in the night etc- but he always used to be tired after that). It does concern me because it is one thing that would mean we couldn't cope with him at home if it continued. Melatonin is the usual answer, but he goes to sleep fine at bed time, and getting it into him in the first place is very difficult.

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Jimjams2 · 21/01/2007 09:52

There's just closed the local respite unit btw.

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NbgsYellowFeathers · 21/01/2007 11:04

Thats a shame about the respite centre. Its very difficult isnt it.
I wish I had some of his energy. I'm currently up all night with a 21 week old baby.
I hope someone can come along with some better answers.

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moondog · 21/01/2007 11:09

Aromathewrapy massage or oils on his pillow? (in consultation with someone who knows what they are doing,not some flighty hippy who has set up after doing a three day online course.)

Some sort of extra stimulation like white noise or vibration?

Would he respond to a system of alarms denoting time to put lights out,time to get up and so on?

Sounds drastic but have you thought of medication?

This no sleep thing seems endemic amongst children with autism.

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Jimjams2 · 22/01/2007 10:42

Oh yes I thought of medicaton (for me not just him ) Not sure what though- he reacts badly to sweetners etc. Melatonin is impoissible to get into him and hasn't worked very well when we have managed. I am ging to ask the pead about all his muscle spasms when I next see her (need to video them) as I think that is related to the difficulties he finds getting back to sleep. They seem pretty involuntary.