Dream a Little Dream

Let's talk about sleep and kids with autism. Or particularly, my kid. Kids with autism often have sleep issues. Either going to sleep, or staying asleep. That is they often don't sleep a whole hell of a lot. I guess I should count myself lucky. After the first year of hell, during which he slept with us and nursed every few hours and only napped for 20 minutes at a time, Sam has been mostly a good sleeper, as far as going to sleep and staying asleep. His fatal flaw is getting up at the crack of dawn. As early as 4:30am to pee, and then we make him go back to his room till about 6. But generally, one of is up letting him out to go to the bathroom between 4:30 and 5:30, and then refereeing his requests (knocks on the door) to at least 6am. At which point, if it's my turn to get up with him, I go lay on the couch with a blanket. Sometimes he goes back to sleep, and sometimes he plays/reads quietly, but more often than not, one of us will keep putting him back to bed until we finally let him out. Mostly me, because M doesn't have the resolve to keep getting up and telling him to go back to bed. M will just get up with him, and I will die before accepting defeat on letting the child out of his room before 6 o'clock. Also, we lock his door from the outside at night. I hesitate to write this, because I know folks will have all sorts of opinions about locking a child in his room at night, but it works for us. It is a safety issue, and neither M or I could sleep listening for Sam up and wandering the house at night.

To be honest, though I resist getting up on my days (we take turns), Sam is pretty easy in the morning and fairly self sufficient. The problem is when he wakes his brother up early, or Max gets up too early for some unknown reason. Max is much more high maintenance in the morning, and there is no pretending to sleep on the couch. There is toasting of big or small Eggos and requests to come in the basement and play or sit with him on the couch. None of which is bad, it just involves being more awake then parenting on the couch, or OTC as my friend Jenny calls it.