Hi,
My partner's 7 year old son who has been diagnosed with an ASD since the age of 3. His autism has an impact on his emotional intelligence and is also causing learning difficulties, but he's very sociable and his meltdowns are pretty much non-existent now. The issue is that he has difficulty sleeping unless there's someone else in the bed with him. It is one of these conundrums, is it related to autism or is it just because it's been a habit that has formed as part of his sleeping issues in the past.
Normally he'll wake up in the middle of the night to discover the person who went to bed with him is no longer there and will get up through the night to wake them, so that they can go back to bed with him. Things have got better as this doesn't happen every night, which means he either doesn't wake through the night or he wakes and then goes back to sleep, but there is still this dependency on someone being in his bed that occurs almost every other night.
Has anyone had a similar experience and advice on how we can break this cycle, as it doesn't feel like something he will grow out of?
Regards,
John
