Lizze and I are facing a growing challenge when it comes to putting the boys to bed at night and having them go to sleep.
Elliott and Emmett went from falling asleep within about thirty minutes of laying down, to being up until midnight almost every single night. This started during Christmas break for some reason, and we can’t figure out why. I guess the reason doesn’t matter as much as finding a way to fucking fix this because this is getting old.
We had finally gotten Emmett through his I have to fall asleep in your bed, and then you can carry me back to mine when you go to sleep phase, around Thanksgiving. It was a glorious time, short-lived as it was.
Nothing changed during the break. We kept the same bedtime, and aside from the insane amount of excitement over Christmas, I don’t remember anything being significantly outside of the norm for us.
[totalpoll id=”46244″]
What’s crazy is that we aren’t even close to being new at this. We’ve been around this block so many times that people regularly seek us out for advice and insight. Unfortunately, all that experience and insight is failing us.
We’ve tried the following:
- Melatonin
- Soft music
- Bedtime stories
- Essential oils
- Back scratching
- No screen time before bed
- Warm bath before bed
- Bedroom door open
- Bedroom door closed
- Settling down an hour before bedtime
I even put an Amazon Echo Dot in their room so they could listen to any song, sound or bedtime story they wanted to after we tucked them in and went downstairs.
Emmett says: Amazon, play Run by Snow Patrol and loop it. He listens to this song over and over until he eventually falls asleep.
The point is, we’ve tried everything we can think of and more, but nothing seems to help. This used to be just an Emmett thing but now Elliott’s experiencing the same thing.
It’s not like they’re keeping each other awake either. We can watch and listen through our Vivint Smart cameras. They aren’t trying to stay awake; they just can’t fall asleep.
There have been quite a few nights lately that the only way they ended up falling asleep was to remove them from their environment and place them on the couch in the living room. We’ll camp out, and that usually helps but it means I have to sleep on the couch and I have a bed for a reason.
Anyway, the boys are finally asleep now, and I am going to try and find some myself.
Sleep problems are notoriously common with kids on the Autism Spectrum. Do you struggle with this kind of thing in your house? Have you found something that helps or discovered something to avoid? Please leave you comments below.
