Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi. its 4.40am, just another day here…..my son who is 13 was diagnosed at 3 years old with asd. Adhd came later. I don’t even know where to begin tbh. let’s start with the main issue right now……sleep or lack of!
he won’t sleep at night, sleeps all day…..not the biggest of issues…..but at night he’s so loud, I mean really loud, shouting along to his iPad (which is on 24 hrs a day, that’s another issue) he goes outside when the sun rises and makes cockerel sounds. My neighbour has had enough- I don’t blame her- but has made it clear that it’s causing her misery and they can’t live like this anymore. Which makes me feel beyond terrible/useless parent/guilty etc etc
I’ll be honest here, I’ve been sitting in tears just now. I’m so tired I got angry with him, to which he reacted with anger and hit out at me. I try to stay calm all the time because I know he mirrors behaviour, but I’m just at the end of my tether. he’s got melatonin tablets…..they don’t work…..he has to be in control of absolutely every situation, and sleeping is the one thing you just can’t make anyone do if they don’t want to.
im wondering if I just can’t have him at home, should he be somewhere with professional help, but this breaks my heart I really don’t want that, but I’m clearly not handling this/him right. I feel so incredibly useless as a parent. is there anyone out there that has lived though this too? guess I’m just looking for some support right now
Jess,
When did the sleeping problem begin and what was happening around that time? Changes of behaviour are usually reactions to something a nonautistic person would not react to, and the reactions can be as unusual as this.
Some people on The Autism Spectrum, the more overwhelmed or overstimulated they are, the more they try to control. They try to control the environment by trying to keep it consistent. With the iPad being a stimulant that is probably what's overstimulating him since he's on it all day.
See if you can identify why he's shouting at the iPad, he's probably going to keep shouting until the iPad does what he wants it to do. If he can't control his anger something like anger management might help, it will just be difficult getting him to go by the sounds of things.
The more information you can gather about what's lead your son here, the closer you'll be able to get to the root of the problems.
Hi,
thanks for your reply. so I believe the reason behind sleeping in the day has a lot to do with weather. His anxiety around the weather is off the scale, can’t cope with wind, clouds, rain….basically anything that isn’t blue sky and sunshine. So in order to never see that he’s got himself in the pattern of sleeping during the day hours so he can avoid it all completely. I’ve tried to wake him, to keep him up on sunny days, nothing seems to work. He will just stay awake all day and night and crash the next day. as for shouting at his iPad, it’s just general chit chat along with whatever he’s watching, not angry shouting- just his voice volume level is off the scale! he’s been to see a psychiatrist recently, that review was as good as it could have been considering it was raining that day, he was prescribed fluoxetine…..which doesn’t seem to have made much difference at all with his anxiety levels. he does need to be in control of everything, and if I challenge this it can result in physical violence, smashing of things he can grab, throwing anything he can find.