ASD sleeping very late, waking very early - help PLEASE

[countdowntoxmas]

DS, aged 7 has been going to sleep at around 10pm and waking at around 5am. Despite our putting him into bed at 7.30, he spends hours moaning and going through mini meltdown. There is nothing we can do to calm him.
His room is pitch black, so we do not know why he is waking up so early, especially when it is dark outside. This has been going on for a couple of weeks now. As a result, he is shattered at school, and his behaviour degenerates, probably due to his exhaustion. What can we do as it is a vicious circle, and I really want to get him to get some much-needed sleep.

730 sounds a little early to put him down. 9pm works for us, but also look into melatonin. Without it, my hyperactive autistic boy would be totally unable to stop long enough to get to sleep

Don't ask me!

My 10 year old goes to bed at 9pm but is still awake till 12/1am then awake at 5am ish. With a wake up for stimming around 3 am.

He seems to function on little sleep. I don't!!

We have tried melatonin in the past but found that he would wake up in the middle of the night, quite stimulated from it. Whilst it helped get him to sleep, it did not keep him asleep. How old is your DS, Sickofsocalledexperts? If I put my DS to sleep at 9pm, he would probably stay up to 11pm, but then again, he may be so knackered that he may fall asleep quickly. I will try it out.
Feeling for you, Personal Clown - I am not at all good on little sleep either...

Ds (15) asd has had a pattern of sleep of anywhere about 9-10.30 and then waking at 5-6.30 am since he was about 3 years old.
I just accepted he didn't need much sleep. I don't sleep much either... I kinda figured he was just like me
He doesn't moan or have a meltdown about it though.... Just gets on with it. What are your boys moans or meltdowns about?

my ds 7 soon to turn 8 no dx but could possibly be asd, had a routine of going to bed at 9pm (didn't take long until he fell to sleep/woke during the night and up early) it had worked for a very long time until our parenting came into question with the ep and we dropped a clanger by mentioning his bedtime we were actually trying to point out his sleeping problems at the time which was waking with night terrors nightmares this info was followed by gasps and roll eyes around the room not the norm for ds.

so we reduced bedtime to 7.30 my ds complained that it takes his body a long time to go to sleep even though his mind wants to his body just wont and he didn't settle until well after 11pm waking more during the night and was harder to get out of bed in the morning (although we think this wasn't helped by the fact that he did not want to go to school). we did this for 4 months which was ample time for him to begin to feel the benifits but his behaviour at school was actually becoming much worse!, so we have since put it back to 9pm and everything has settled again. He now has a really heavy blanket on his bed and he has a few minutes of me giving him bearhugs! He is still waking in the night, getting up early, but seems much better for it.

Go with his natural body clock, we all know one size doesn't fit all! I remember being put into bed at 7 when I was younger and spending my time reading the wizard of oz book over and over in the window until it was pitch black (we weren't allowed lights on my parents were VERY strict!!) and I was still awake way after my parents went to bed so I can sympathize with what my ds tells me.

Dd will be 5 on Friday and has long had a bedtime of 9pm. We tried sending her earlier which just resulted in a child leaping around upstairs and me and dh with our heads in our hands rocking back and forth in the living room.

We took the decision to give her a later bedtime and have not looked back. She will go to sleep 9/10 times fairly straight away and most of the time will sleep all night. She recently started on melatonin so the settling to sleep has much improved. As mentioned tho it does not keep her asleep and she still has the odd night where she wakes (Sunday at 4.30 [shocked] )

She is just a child who functions quite well on quite little sleep, dh is the same, I am not

emoticon fail

Funny, I came on to post the same thing. DS7 has always been pretty reliable about going to sleep, he loves his bed and sleep, but atm he's taking ages to settle. And I can really see a difference in him in the mornings, he's also had a couple of bad weeks at school.

He goes to bed, has a story and cuddle etc, then we go out of the room and he's putting his light back on and reading his books. The first we usually know about it is the thump of a book being thrown from his bunk bed. However that's better than a melt down... would that work for your DS countdown? Letting him put his bedside light on and read for a bit? We're obviously going to have to do something, but don't know what.

My DS is 9. But I think even at 7 we were putting him to bed at 845/9pm.

DD went to bed at 9pm until she was about two. Then we moved it forward to 8.30. Works really well for her (although she has no confirmed diagnosis). If she isn't tired, she hops out of bed and spins a bit on her zebra, but sometimes she also looks through her books or plays with Violet (she's only 3 and a bit). I dread to think what would happen if we had an earlier bed time, when we first moved it forward, she would play for up to a couple of hours in her room. NT DS goes to bed at the same sort of time, but could probably easily go to bed a bit earlier. I think I just give birth to night owls.

My dd can get by on about 4 hours sleep. Unfortunately I can't. Melatonin works for us, most of the time, but we do often have a waking in the night pattern that is very tiring. But dd is better at going back to sleep with minimal disruption. although not a fail safe by any means

have you tried the time release melatonin?

Another option could be one of those sleep training clocks that show day/night so he can see its night when he wakes.
The method we were told is best done when you dont actually have to be up in the day, I think the idea of them is to set it for just after he wakes, so he is rewarded for staying in bed until "day" time. (Involes getting up and started for the day early, and slowly (nightly) put it later and later until he learns to go back to sleep, and stay in bed until a normal getting up time.

I am struggling with similar issues as well. DD (7, Asp & Adhd) takes melatonin at night but still has trouble settling. We try to get moving towards bed at 7.30 but it can be 8 before we get upstairs. We have managed to move away from reading a story every night, to just twice a week (we were spending over an hour there and DD would be still awake).

But we will then often end up with DD doing a maths worksheet, sudoku, wordsearch, word mining or colouring in page to "help her mind go asleep". I am happy to allow that for 20 minutes or so, but then try to get her lying down - she is allowed to read to herself in bed and turn off her own light. (I was, and still am, also a reader). She also listens to either an audio book or music (we try for classical and calm types rather than boppy stuff, but last night it was Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack) on the ipod.

She's also back into very early rising again - roughly 6am since late last week (although after a few days of it, she was still asleep this morning when I left at 7.30).

The trouble at the moment is that DH is away (he works abroad 50% of the time, but it's the first since Christmas) and she is so tired that she's on a very uneven keel emotionally and can wobble into difficult territory very easily when she's overtired. And I have too many stresses this fortnight to deal with it well.

I am hoping that we can have a somewhat more relaxed night tonight as the au pair is out at her class. (They get on well, but seemed to be hopping off each other the past few days). I am just bailing out of work and leaving a pile to do tomorrow instead.

If your GP is sympathetic you could try alimemazine. It's very strong so you only need very small amount ds takes 0.75 but it will keep him asleep. You only need v small amount as if it's is too much it will make him groggy next day. We find this works really well.