Sleeping tips for 6 year old ?

[FedoraRora]

My DS has ASD and he just doesn't sleep. It seems that the older he gets the less he sleeps. In the past 2 years he's only ever slept through the night 4 times!!

We have a very long bed time routine, bath, book, gentle massaging, lights low, absolutely nothing an hour before bed but the best results we've had were last winter when he slept for almost 8 hours!

But now with the heat it's a miracle if he can sleep for 2 hours without waking.

2 different GPs have said that he's too young for medication. I dread to imagine what the summer is going to be like.

Does anyone have a miracle cure or some brilliant tips.

No one?

Polter, if he gets up, he comes in the living room & asks to watch something/go on the computer, we say no & then put him back to bed, he then gets up & comes back and we immediately put him back to bed, it takes a good hour sometimes even two before he's fast asleep, it's a battle of wills

Screens or any sort of light just keep him up, if you give him an iPad or a phone or a games console, he'll be on it till the sun rises.

He never gets tired, he has so much energy that it's astounding. We don't let him nap at all in the day time because then it just makes trying to get him to bed a thousand times harder.

We try our best to physically tire him out, one of us will take him out every evening for a bike ride or to the park and even when he comes home exhausted, he'll be up in 2 hours.

He wakes up 4/5 times a night and he's just so full of energy.

We took him swimming this evening, did his routine, then he was asleep at 8 but he'a already woken up.

I'll have a look at Cerebra, thank you for replying to my post .

His OT came up with his bedtime routine, which believe it or not has helped as before he'd never get to sleep before midnight.

I never thought about explaining sleep cycles, I have said it's time for bed but I've never explained it in detail, so that's definetly something we could try.

We've tried letting him stay up in his room, but his awareness of danger is pretty awful and he likes to make a lot of noise & a lot of mess and that just excites him even more & he just won't get to sleep until absolutely ridiculous hours.

The only thing that actually calms him down is a bus ride, which we didn't figure out until a year ago because we drive everywhere.

I don't really understand it because he fidgets like mad in the car & sings to himself but on a bus ride, he's just dead quiet. The transformation is unbelievable.

I'll look at Dawn Huebner's work books, right now I'm desperate for anything, so genuinely thank you for the ideas, hopefully something will work & he'll start to routinely sleep through the night

You need a Camhs referral. If the gp won't prescribe melatonin ancamhs psychiatrist will listen to you and probably go for a trial with medication. Our gp refused it and we just got it recently through Camhs. Medication changed our lives. We use it "as and when" and have the bedtime routine firmly in place. We went in a trial with the lowest dose for 3 months then had a break and now "as and when". It's been better for ds too as he's needed the sleep. My ds has add also as well as a dx of asd.

Melatonin worked for us, DS was 4 when he started it and we've kept it going ever since and he's six now. I recommended it to my friend- her son was 11 and slept terribly for many years until he tried melatonin and it re-set his sleep pattern with two weeks and doesn't need it now.