Please help I’ve lost all perspective - ASD teenager

[MyBrainHurts1]

My DD is 13 and is late diagnosed ASD

I like to feel I’m a good parent and cater to pretty much all of her needs but the one I’m really struggling with is her intense need for complete silence when she wants to go to bed

She doesn’t fall asleep easily so some nights its 8 and others nearly 12 so it is really hard to then have any sort of evening as she refuses to wear any sort of ear loops and any noise at all such as me and her dad talking downstairs or her sister ( 17 ) going to get a drink will send her into a complete rage followed by a lot of upset 😢

We have rearranged the house so that she’s in the bedroom furthest away from the other bedrooms and she has an en suite as sharing a bathroom was something she she struggled with

I am starting to feel very low and isolated basically going to my room when she goes to bed, waiting an hour or so before attempting to creep downstairs with boot her hearing to have a chat or get things done that I haven’t got round to but literally any noise and all hell breaks loose

What would you do?

Ha, this is me! I have had insomnia all my life, even as a very small child. I focus in any noise however small and it stops me from sleeping. (I am also autistic)
Last year i bought a white noise machine from Amazon- it's like a miracle cure!. I sleep with it on my pillow and if my neighbours are being noisy I have slept with it on my head. The white noise prevents me from focusing on any other noise.
And the rain setting helps me relax enough to fall asleep

Actually employment rates for autistic individuals are quite low. The ONS puts employment rates of autistic adults at 22%. This is the lowest of most disabled groups.

I would like to think this particular issue is solvable with care and patience, but there are plenty of aspects of autusm that you just can't learn to deal with.

There’s a lot going on here and, but deep down I believe that the special needs of one, does not outrank the needs of everyone else in the house.

There is always a solution.

My feeling is that she is like a person not wanting to let you call her an ambulance, she is not well enough to make that decision so you have to make it for her.

Could you try the melatonin gummy sweets and say they are like vitamins that her body is not making ?

Keep trying keep posting keep asking for help. You will find a solution x

Also, if I could suggest that you ask her ‘what is the problem with the earplugs’ and you might be surprised with the answer you get and come up with an alternative based on her answer.

I was coming back to say something similar. There are lots of very able people with autism who are not able to find a workplace that is tolerable for them due to their sensory sensitivities.

This is one of those situations where people who don't have the disability in question (or don't have a disability involving very pronounced sensory sensitivity) really just need to accept the experience of people who do have it even if they can't imagine how it would feel for themselves.

I hope you can persuade her to try melatonin and possibly Sertraline by talking about them being supplements rather than medication as others have suggested.

One thing that might help is getting her outside each day as sunlight does have a positive affect on sleep, for all ages.

Will she read when she's in bed? I've had trouble getting to sleep for years and reading is the one thing that's almost guaranteed to help.

It's a shame that she thinks the diagnosis is wrong. Do you know why she thinks that? Just before and during the assessment process we talked about people we knew and famous people who had ADHD or ASD.

A MNer might be able to recommend some age appropriate books for her where the main character has ASD

This is a difficult one to navigate. As many PP have pointed out, this is not just her being irrationally difficult. At the same time, as others have pointed out, the more she can learn to find solutions that work and don't require putting everyone else out, the better for all.

re melotonin - very difficult and I feel your pain. DS almost always refuses to take his. I can sometimes convince him if, for example, he has an extra early start by reminding him it's not "medicine" as such but rather a supplement and that in fact, in many countries, you can just buy it over the counter. I also remind him that it doesn't make him pass out like a sleeping pill will. It's just an aid. I would also suggest taking a slightly more relaxed view on bedtimes - perhaps a bit later to start with or agree that if she's struggling to sleep, she can sit back up and read for 20 minutes or similar.

I would also be suggesting that you look at white noise or other sounds that would drown out any external sounds - we are past this now but for a while, DS went to sleep with rain sounds on his Alexa and as a baby relied heavily on the music from his monitor. A friend's dd slept for years with audio books playing very loudly - my friend would turn them off remotely before she went to bed hours later. her.

Depending on how she is and what support you have in place, you do need to be having conversations about the fact that while you are very sympathetic to the challenge, it's simply not practical for the solution to be everyone else goign to bed in silence at the same time she does. I think that teenagers' natural refusal to believe that everything they think is 100% true is often x100 with ND children, but nonetheless, it's a lesson that has to be consistently reinforced.