Living with Children with Sleep Disorders

You hear the floorboards creak and the not-so-soft pitter-patter of feet running down the hall. You look at the clock: 1:15 a.m. It’s your husband’s turn. Harshly, you poke him in the ribcage until he stops snoring and begins to wake up. “John, wake up, Michael’s out of his room again.” Your husband mumbles something out of the side of his mouth, rolls over, and slowly sits up. Rubbing his eyes, he blearily gets out of bed to recover your child and get him back into bed.

You close your eyes for what seems like only a minute. Again, you wake up to the tromping of your son’s feet echoing down the halls. It’s your turn this time. You roll over and look at the clock: 3:38 a.m. You force yourself out of bed and go to retrieve your son; frustrated over your lack of sleep, you place your son back into bed. It’s 5:17 a.m. and this time your child is up for good. Less than six hours of sleep…again.

This almost wouldn’t be so bad if your son where 2 months instead of two years old. You’d expect it to happen, because that’s what babies do. But now, two years later, your child has been diagnosed as being “at risk” for having autism spectrum disorder. Every night, it’s the same fight to get your autistic son to go to sleep. You begin the ritual at 7:30 p.m. and he finally falls asleep sometime between 10:30 p.m. and 11 p.m.

Like many parents with autistic children, you are at your wits’ end. You do not know what to do or where to turn. You have seen a number of occupational therapists who have tried multiple techniques to get your son to sleep earlier or to sleep longer, and yet nothing has worked. This is fairly common.

Almost all research on autism in children shows that upward of 80 percent suffer from some sort of sleep disorder. These travails can be loosely placed into one of three categories: not sleeping long enough, having problems going to sleep, and waking throughout the middle of the night. As many parents of autistic children know, being sleep deprived is a significant stress on their own lives that not only affect the parents’ well-being but also affect the parents’ ability to manage difficult behaviors in their autistic children.

Current research is promising, however. Melatonin, a hormone produced by the pineal gland that helps to regulate sleep patterns, has shown that it might help. Recently, a small study showed that use of melatonin helped to decrease the time it takes for an autistic child to fall asleep. In addition, indicators show the herbal supplement also aided in helping children sleep longer.

Still, despite the initial studies, there is quite a bit more research needed in order to call the use of melatonin a success. Also, considering that melatonin doesn’t put a child to sleep in the same way a traditional sleeping pill does, parents who have children who periodically get up throughout the nigh should explore alternatives that can aid in keeping their child safe should he or she wake up throughout the night.

There are a number of different beds that seek to ease may help with getting autistic children to sleep, including Noah’s Bed, created by the parents of an autistic child and their carpenter neighbor. The bed helps create a safe surrounding for the child while allowing the parents the comfort of knowing their child will kept safe while they sleep and get needed rest.