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He can't fall asleep but is soooo tired!

SarahR

Hi,

just wondering if anyone has any suggestions about how i can help my 11 year old son to fall asleep??

he goes up to bed at 7:30pm, and is still awake a couple of hours later - it can get to midnight sometimes! as you can guess he's tired the next day, irritable and can never explain what's keeping him awake. he looks pale all the time, and sometimes we have a lot of bad nights in a row and he starts to look ill.

i have told him that we are trying switching all the lights off upstairs now, as he's old enough, and that upset him and he said it made him uncomfortable. i've tried baths, warm drinks, letting him read for half an hour.....short of using a rubber mallet, i don't know what else to try!! don't want to go down the drug route really....

thanks

 

Parents

  • My son Alex is 4 and has had problems sleeping for some time now. It would take 2 to 3 hours for him to get to sleep (from a bed time of 8 pm), and very often he would wake six hours later, full of energy and totally refreshed. He has very limited communication so reasoning with him just isn't an option. This was happening at least 4 days out of every 7. We got to our wits end (sleep deprivation is a common form of torture) and started to look for solutions on the internet. We read about melatonin and tried some. It dramatically reduced the time he took to settle down for bed, which made things better, but didn't really keep him asleep. We had an appointment at the local CDU which was six months on from his assessment and the Doctor was surprised the melatonin we had got off the internet had worked, but said there was nothing wrong with it and prescribed some for us. This has worked really well, again reducing the time he takes to get to sleep and is really effective at keeping him asleep. Now, the 6 hour sleeps are only about once a week, which is manageable. Melatonin is not a "drug", but a hormone which is naturally produced in the body. You can read much more about it on the internet. Personally, we felt totally comfortable giving our son this as it was getting to the point where our lack of sleep and inability to supervise him during the night was getting dangerous. We have not experienced any side effects. We also were prescribed a sedative by the paediatrician as he said it was best to switch things so he does not build up a resistance to either. The sedative is one they give to children with excema to help with scratching in the night. It too seems effective but takes longer to settle him down, about an hour compared with about 20 minutes for the melatonin.

    Just as an example, here is Alex at 5 am, after being up since 2:30 am!

    http://vimeo.com/21067899

Reply

  • My son Alex is 4 and has had problems sleeping for some time now. It would take 2 to 3 hours for him to get to sleep (from a bed time of 8 pm), and very often he would wake six hours later, full of energy and totally refreshed. He has very limited communication so reasoning with him just isn't an option. This was happening at least 4 days out of every 7. We got to our wits end (sleep deprivation is a common form of torture) and started to look for solutions on the internet. We read about melatonin and tried some. It dramatically reduced the time he took to settle down for bed, which made things better, but didn't really keep him asleep. We had an appointment at the local CDU which was six months on from his assessment and the Doctor was surprised the melatonin we had got off the internet had worked, but said there was nothing wrong with it and prescribed some for us. This has worked really well, again reducing the time he takes to get to sleep and is really effective at keeping him asleep. Now, the 6 hour sleeps are only about once a week, which is manageable. Melatonin is not a "drug", but a hormone which is naturally produced in the body. You can read much more about it on the internet. Personally, we felt totally comfortable giving our son this as it was getting to the point where our lack of sleep and inability to supervise him during the night was getting dangerous. We have not experienced any side effects. We also were prescribed a sedative by the paediatrician as he said it was best to switch things so he does not build up a resistance to either. The sedative is one they give to children with excema to help with scratching in the night. It too seems effective but takes longer to settle him down, about an hour compared with about 20 minutes for the melatonin.

    Just as an example, here is Alex at 5 am, after being up since 2:30 am!

    http://vimeo.com/21067899

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