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3 year old getting overtired and waking

pulla0

Hi,

my 3 year old daughter (who has ASD, but so far quite high functioning) has recently become very difficult to put to bed in the evening and even though she ends up dropping off at about 10 pm, still wakes up at 2-3am, very distressed.

When attempting to get her to into bed, she throws big tantrums (and screams, crys, flings herself on the floor, etc.) even though to look at her, she looks absolutely shattered.  She knows what the word 'No' means and says it regularly when we ask her to go to bed. 

This is a nightly battle and is bad enough.. but also she tends to wake up in the middle of the night, very distressed and unconsolable, almost as if she is in a strange place, surrounded by strange people.  We cant talk to her, or touch her without her screaming and flinging herself on the floor (which can be quite dangerous), she'll then stay awake for an hour or two before dropping off again.

I've read a bit about melatonin deficiency and possible night terrors, etc. but I was wondering if there was anyone who has any similar experience (with a simliar age child) and any ideas for how to approach dealing with it.

I think she is too young for the use of warnings or timeouts as she wont really understand the concepts yet.

This is generally causing quite a lot of disruption to our household and family and puts everyone on edge.  I'd be very interested to hear about anyone's experiences in this area and any success with dealing with it.

Many thanks

  • Thanks for your replies.

    We're due to see the specialist in a couple of weeks so we'll go through the options.

    In the meantime, we have introduced a 'quiet time' in the house, which starts about 7.30pm.  All electricals go off, noisy toys go away and curtains are shut and everyone talks softly.  We don't try to encourage her to go to bed before she wants to, so as not to upset her, and we've found that she naturally winds down and heads off to bed on her own.. it can take a couple of hours though!  (But we would rather that than have a screaming match..!)

    We're still not sure about why she is waking up in such a state though..

  • Hi pulla0,

    My son Alex is autistic and has a lot of trouble with sleep. I don't think he has *ever* woken up as distressed as you daughter, but most nights would be up until 10/11pm and very often wake up at 2/3/4am. We got to the point where we were so tired it was becoming dangerous (he was just about to turn 4) and asked at his diagnosis meeting if there was anything to help. We got a prescription for melatonin and something called alimemazine. We give him the melatonin every night just before his bed time (8pm) and in about 20 minutes he is ready for bed. Now if something disturbs him as he is settling down to sleep he can be back up and it can be hours before he settles down. However this is rare and it has been really effective in reducing 'winding down time' from two to three hours to about half an hour! We had tried every single thing we could think of before this. Tiring him out during the day, lavender smell, baths, stories, music, hot milk you name. Nothing worked effectively but the melatonin has. From what I understand about melatonin it is something most people produce in their body naturally so we have no concerns giving it to him and it has had no noticable side effects at all.

    Even with this, Alex often wakes up at 2/3/4 am. Again, he is never upset, but often full of beans, running around, jumping, shouting, etc. When we give him the alimemazine, he almost always sleeps through the night. From what I understand it is a type of sedative given to children with eczema to help them sleep through the night without scratching. We don't give him this more than two nights running as it doesn't tend to be effective on the third night and the doctor did say he can build up a resistance to it. We only use this when Alex has had a few sleepless nights on the trot. After having this, he tends to have a 'mad hour' where he is even more energetic than usual and giddy, but you can almost time it to the minute and when that hour is up he tends to fall asleep in seconds.

    Obviously the medication route is entirely a personally choice but we found it immensely helpful. Sleep deprevation doesn't help anyone, and it was getting to the point where it was actually becoming dangerous for us. I hope this information is of some use to you, and good luck!

    Luke

  • Hi

    I am sorry to read that you are experiencing difficulties with your little girl.  I can understand how difficult things are for your family at the moment.  

    I have posted a link below from the NAS site which details help and advice relating to sleep problems.  I hope that there is something there that may be able to help you.

    http://www.autism.org.uk/living-with-autism/understanding-behaviour/sleep-and-autism-helping-your-child.aspx

    A thought that I had was have you put anything new in her room recently such as a new toy or a picture on the wall that she may be scared of.  It could even be a shadow on her wall caused by a light in another room.  I know that when my son was much younger we learnt not to put anything new in his room because he did not like thing changed.  Things stayed the same in his room for years until he coped better with change.

    Let me know how you get on and hope that you find something which might help

    ColinCat