Children with ADHD sleeping

[ellis7468]

Im a 3rd year student studying graphic design and my project is trying to design a solution to help children with ADHD sleep better, If you have a child with ADHD I'm very interested in hearing what problems you face such as what you do to get them to sleep and what they do when they cant sleep?
Thanks!

[Twinkletowedelephant]

My son dosn't like sleep it's very boring...

We have gone through about a million night lights untill he has found one he likes (super Mario) he didn't like the dark

He will often try to take tech up to bed kindle /ds ) tablet whatever else he can find. We do a sweep of his room before bed.....then about half an hour later as well

He's now nearly 9 he dosn't need a lot of sleep and isn't often asleep before midnite.

He will leave his room and go and wake up his siblings in turn to play ... He will get out his soft toys and have 'epic' Pokemon battles or plants Vs zombie.... Failing all that he will read.. if it's something very interesting (mainly reads fact books) he will come down and tell me about it.

Heavy or weighted blanket helped for a while...but the thicker the blanket the better it is to ball up and launch yourself into it from you bed ...

I always have a 'chat ' with him before bed to get all his words out before sleep and often pop upstairs with bits do I can keep an eye on what he's up to....

[Muddling2]

Graphic design is not the right area I'm afraid as encouraging sleep requires less stimulation in activities, sound and decoration.

[ellis7468]

From my research Ive discovered this varies for different children, the title of my brief is 'Design a product, service or system to improve health and wellbeing by encouraging and/or enabling better sleep.' and i am now looking at ways to keep a child with ADHD in bed whilst slowly relaxing them. My solution does not have to be a specific product but a service or system, it does not have to be visual and could even be a guide for the parent therefore any feed back is helpful. Thank you Twinkletowedelephant!

[user1489434024]

Have you looked into how different shapes and colours ans sounds affect us? For example red light has little to no effect on melatonin production. And hey always say white or pink noise can help settle poor sleepers.

I've certainly used the latter to great success.

[ellis7468]

Hey thanks yeah I have! The majority of feedback I've received has suggested that many children get to sleep better through talking out loud or to someone to get all their thoughts or words out, So Im thinking of making a something to go in the childs room that they can talk to for a short amount of time before they slept. Im going to do alot more research into technology such as things like Amazons Alexa that talks back. but Im thinking something along the lines of this. Do you think this would work for children with ADHD? thanks!!