DD can't sleep in boarding

[greenbuterfly]

DD with ASD started at a residential school in September. She says some other girls are noisy and prevent her from sleeping. Now she say she is sleeping 3 hours per nights and falls asleep in lessons.

She used to sleep well at home, although going to bed later than at school.

Anyone experienced sleep problems at residential schools and how to tackle that?

You need to ring the school up and tell them of the problem.

The school seem to believe there is no problem. At home this half term DD clearly does not sleep for a fair number of hours during the night, so the problem is real.

Any experience / ideas how to solve this problem?

I saw your other thread in Education.

I think this is one you need to take up with the boarding house staff. You can't sort it remotely, this bit of pastoral care lies with them while she is in their care.

It can't be just the noise if she is now not sleeping at home. And at 5am I really doubt it would be the noise anyway. With insomnia it is quite common I think for the sufferer to feel like they haven't slept a wink while others report they looked like they slept soundly. I guess the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle - she is getting more sleep than she thinks (though I'm sure it would be tricky to convince her of this) but possibly less than the boarding staff report.

I think you need to go back to them with the new info you've gathered over half term, ie that she is waking early now, any other evidence of wakings, what she's said. Repeat that DD feels like she is very short of sleep. Them reporting that she is asleep at X time doesn't change the fact that she is feeling underslept and tired. You had a bashing on the other thread but I think there is a grain of truth that there might be anxiety behind this, and if the boarding staff aren't cognisant of that and prepared to take steps to reassure her, then are they the right people to be in charge of her pastoral care?

She's autistic and there's been a huge change in her life. I do think it's normal for any child going to boarding school to react to this huge change, and it's still early days. I remember exactly who was most homesick in my first year at boarding school and I'm sure it lasted months, not weeks. With autism in the mix the change is likely to be that much harder for her. It's a huge adjustment, it will take time. I'm sure you made that very difficult decision only in her best interests, but it's still OK for her to have a reaction to being taken away from home, and you can expect a few bumps in the road while she settles.

Sorry for waffling on. I would tend to work on the basis that it's a reaction to the change, ride it out and reassure. However it's perhaps a measure of the pastoral care there whether the staff seek to help (if only to address her anxiety) or continue to say there is no problem.

Thanks Fish. I agree with everything you said.

The sleep disruption is part of the adjustment, it is caused by a combination of change, transition anxiety and specific triggers of girls being noisy in the room. They certainly are trying to reassure her, but it is not enough / not working. I need to make them to disrupt the unhealthy sleep pattern and make interventions to help DD to sleep even if they are not funded for this. This is what I am trying to do.

However the problem does not have any easy solution, it is an impossible can of worms. DD is in a specialist school. They are aware of her anxiety and MH risks. All children are there after tribunals, with ASD and EHCPs. I understand why the school react they way they do, they are in a difficult situation so they delay and deny.

I don't have much experience dealing with specialist schools. How do you interact with them 'effectively'?

Any suggestions how to pin them down to deal with it?

I don't have experience of specialist schools either but I would be going back with the new info you now have from observing her at home.

Early waking is a tricky one and I'm not sure it's realistic to expect them to introduce another big change to "disrupt her sleeping pattern" and expect that to fix it. If you want to go down the medication route then do so, but via GP not buying from strangers over the internet. Maybe GP could give you a short course to help her reset. Does she access the GP through school now? But short of that, I'm finding it difficult to imagine any easy fixes. What would you do if she was still at home? We never cracked my DD's early waking until she was old enough to understand and "rest" in the mornings, and we moved her groclock a bit at a time. I'm afraid there are millions of pounds to be made from desperate parents by anyone who figures out how to get children to sleep later without meds. I know this is not the answer you want.

Going to the GP is an obvious route, but probably will result in months on a waiting list for a specialist. Medication is not viable as the school would not administer without a prescription (quite rightly).

The first thing is to acknowledge the problem and discuss with the school the effective first steps they can agree to take ASAP. And take from there. DD used to sleep fewer hours that they expect at school, she used to go to bed later. But I expected that all the after school activities and huge amount of social interaction would wear her down completely. It is about the quality of sleep, the rest. It is not viable for her to continue waking up in the middle of the night. That needs to be acted upon now, the disruption needs to be removed and she needs lower arousal before bed and some meditation technique to go back to sleep if she wakes up in the middle of the night. She should have solid hours of good quality restful sleep. If it means she would wake up one hour earlier, than we should agree on a structured activities she should do. Listen to an audiobook, read, do arts and crafts...

If she is still waking in the night at home it does suggest the problem is not necessarily noise from other pupils although this might have started the problem. Certainly, when ds1 started at his specialist school he had lots of issues about not feeling safe and this might be another cause. To resolve the problem we got the staff to explain how he could ask for help and what action they would take if another pupil was disruptive.

ds1 is a day pupil but when we have had issues with his specialist school our normal route is.

1. Email to form tutor or house worker raising the problem and asking for their help in solving the issue. Presumably they agree she is falling asleep in lessons and that this needs a solution.

1. If no action then this is followed by a phone call.

1. If still no action then phone call to HT.

1. If still no action then ask for a face-to-face meeting with HT and whoever is responsible for dealing with the issue (we probably average about one a year!)

1. If still no action escalate to the SEN team at the local authority. They hate this though so only used as an absolute last resort.

There is I think an underlying problem of DD feeling "freaked out" as she says.

Any suggestions of what intervention is reasonable to expect from the school?