3 year old daughter continually wakes

Hi,

I am really hoping someone may be able to offer some words of wisdom around my daughter, I have suspected for a while that’s she has ASD, her moods are very changeable, she has to follow certain routines/directions, hates certain touch/feel and can lash out, all of this has been manageable but I am now starting to really struggle with her sleep pattern.

She has night terrors 1-2 times a month, I have to let her work out of them, hopefully this makes sense and then she will want cuddles and goes straight back to sleep, more recently she has started waking 5-6 times a night, leading to very broken sleep for her and myself.

i have also noticed that she will be randomly talking in her sleep or almost grinding her teeth. 

i have done the obvious of a calm bedtime routine, bath and milk and no screen time, o have cut out sugar from her diet but in the last few weeks and in particular 5/7 nights have been broken which I know isn’t great!

any words of advice would be hugely appreciated - I have an appointment booked with the dr and a sleep diary from the last month, but tbh don’t hold out much hope with them.

thanks 

Parents
  • Minding a diet is useful for biology, but it's more important she's healthy. In order to stay hydrated properly, one needs a certain amount of natural sugars. Honey, Maple Syrup and fruit are all good unless she has an allergy, and won't typically affect our sub(merged) conscious. 

    My brother who majored in Physics and Maths had severe Night Terrors and trouble sleeping. My son and I have similar nightmares (he composes, I work in sound) and when our brain is running at a hyper-speed have extreme trouble with sleeping. I think my father too who's an engineer and majored in physics. There is something it seems to a brain wired toward a level of intellect that can send the Occipital Lobe into a hyper-drive. The best resource for me was soothing music at night. For my son it was reading fiction in a physical book. For all of us we needed to exhaust our thinking for the day and sometimes I just need to read Kant or someone working at a level I can just reach, but it intensive. If I don't dive into metaphysics and logic and all kinds of explorations, it can cause problems. But I have also noticed Spiritual practice helped as did reading the bible for myself.

    Jung was fascinated by dreams and it's often said what we don't work through in the day will then be bothering us in our sleep. Perhaps it's important to find any unresolved issues, complexities, theorems, etc. I know she's 3. But when I was 3 I was asking about matters of the infinite universe, past lives, and other really deep & complex inquisitions. I'm not sure if it helps, but I used to read my son classic stories, like the old Paddington, Chronicles of Narnia, The Little Prince, etc. before bed. These are books with very few pictures and much better to engage small brains with big concepts. They seemed to help. 

Reply
  • Minding a diet is useful for biology, but it's more important she's healthy. In order to stay hydrated properly, one needs a certain amount of natural sugars. Honey, Maple Syrup and fruit are all good unless she has an allergy, and won't typically affect our sub(merged) conscious. 

    My brother who majored in Physics and Maths had severe Night Terrors and trouble sleeping. My son and I have similar nightmares (he composes, I work in sound) and when our brain is running at a hyper-speed have extreme trouble with sleeping. I think my father too who's an engineer and majored in physics. There is something it seems to a brain wired toward a level of intellect that can send the Occipital Lobe into a hyper-drive. The best resource for me was soothing music at night. For my son it was reading fiction in a physical book. For all of us we needed to exhaust our thinking for the day and sometimes I just need to read Kant or someone working at a level I can just reach, but it intensive. If I don't dive into metaphysics and logic and all kinds of explorations, it can cause problems. But I have also noticed Spiritual practice helped as did reading the bible for myself.

    Jung was fascinated by dreams and it's often said what we don't work through in the day will then be bothering us in our sleep. Perhaps it's important to find any unresolved issues, complexities, theorems, etc. I know she's 3. But when I was 3 I was asking about matters of the infinite universe, past lives, and other really deep & complex inquisitions. I'm not sure if it helps, but I used to read my son classic stories, like the old Paddington, Chronicles of Narnia, The Little Prince, etc. before bed. These are books with very few pictures and much better to engage small brains with big concepts. They seemed to help. 

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