You Can Lead A Child To Bed,,,,,,

[Mytwopenceworth]

But how the F do you make him sleep?

DS1- 6 and autistic, v limited vocab, not a good sleeper. i put him to bed at 7 and he is still awake now. his brother is in my bed as otherwise ds1 keeps him awake too and it is making him ill. this is an ongoing problem. all toys are put away at night and cupboard locked, making the place as boring as possible - result kicking the door and bashing the window and screaming and smearing also sometimes. I have taken the bulb out of his bedroom so he has the light from the landing only thru glass over door. i keep going in to settle him but he just will not sleep. when he does he then wakes up and i have to get up again! Then i cant sleep and end up on here at 3am!! then he is knackered in the morning and doesnt want to get up (I make him - its my revenge!!)

how can you make someone sleep? i mean, you can make the room dark, force them to stay in bed - or at least keep putting them back in bed! but you cannot actually force sleep, so what can i do?

ive tried exhausting him during the day, but the kid just doesnt tire easy!!

Have you looked into the possibility of trying melatonin? It doesn't work for everyone but may be what your ds needs to help him get to sleep. FWIW my ds2 is still wide awake and shows no sign of dropping off yet.

drug him? i feel really uncomfortable about that cos his non sleeping seems to cause me more problems than him, so would i not be drugging him up for my convenience? wouldnt that make me horrible?

I mean he is tired in the mornings, but after half an hour he is fine, he doesnt seem to suffer. But then on the other hand, how do i know how much progress he would make if he slept more, so that would be a good reason to investigate treatments, wouldnt it?

IIRC melatonin is something that occurs naturally in the brain. For some unknown reason people with ASD tend not to produce as much and so find it difficult to get to sleep. The Paed has offered us some for ds2 but I'm waiting until he settles into a proper routine with pre-school etc before deciding what to do.

There are quite a few threads on it in the SN archives which will probably give you more accurate info.

I've no experience of children with SN, but do have experience of non-sleepers. I would agree with coppertop that melatonin isn't really like drugging someone as it's fairly "natural". It really wouldn't make you a bad person anyway though- you need sleep and so does he, and if there's a way of doing that then it is really worth a try.

I do feel for you

i will ask, i'll phone his paed. can't be good for a 6 yr old to sleep for, what, 7 hours disturbed sleep at that. so ta for info.