Does anyone else have a child with autism who falls asleep repeatedly during the day ??

[Sleepyasd]

Either after a meltdown or in place of one when they’ve become overstimulated/ overwhelmed or have felt upset and masked so much ?

Dd keeps falling asleep all the time ? Anything slightly off routine or scary to her and she falls asleep can be up to 4 times a day on a bad day. No underlying issues as have been seen by GP and paeds team and been told it’s due to ASD.

If anyone else has this issue does it get better with time ? Dd is 5 so I’m really hoping so

Yes. The key is to avoid things that over-stimulate, require masking, and to soothe any upsets.

Falling asleep is the brain going into shutdown and needing to reset in order to cope. It means the child has been exposed to far too much stress.

Repeated exposure to whatever causes meltdowns and overwhelm doesn’t help, so if you keep doing it, it won’t get better. You need to find work arounds.

I don’t know what to do as her threshold for falling asleep is so low that I’m struggling to cut out those stresses for her. I’m hoping she builds up resilience somehow if we are gradual with things but it’s the slightest thing or things I can’t avoid. I’m just hoping with time it gets easier and happens less. It’s really making everyday life so hard

Yeah stress seems to be the cause for us.

Do you have any examples?

I’m just hoping with time it gets easier and happens less.
This isn’t going to happen. Ignoring it and hoping it goes away isn’t a work around. If you give us examples, we may be able to suggest work arounds.

It can be day to day things eg getting dressed if she decides she doesn’t like the feel of something even if she’s worn it before - she will start scratching at her skin and crying then gets too hot and out of breath then will suddenly just stare into space lie down and fall asleep.
Toothbrushing can often cause a full meltdown then she will sleep after . Sometimes it’s 10 mins sleep sometimes hours it’s never consistent time wise or in line with how bad the reaction was so what seems like a small upset can cause a 2 hour sleep and a huge meltdown can result in a 10/15 min nap .

She has had a few episodes where she has seen something unexpected out of the window and has got very upset and then fallen asleep sobbing (once was a cat in the garden I think it startled her , the other times it was birds)

At school they have told us that if the walk a different route to somewhere she will freeze and cry and then has ended up multiple times asleep on a TA or if they’ve got her back to class she falls asleep on the carpet. She will not go in the library at all there.

If we go out anywhere different she will just sleep and sleep if she wakes and we are still there she just looks around and then goes back to sleep. We can’t wake her either it’s a deep sleep at times like that