My eldest (13) has always had a hard time getting to sleep, but these past few months have been on another level. He's a yo-yo kid, up and down the stairs night after night with random questions or to share ideas. It sometimes gets a bit much, but I don't mind it as long as it's a positive experience for him.
Unfortunately, the random questions stopped and an intense kind of fear took over. It started with him coming downstairs panicking over seemingly minor things that happened months ago looking for reassurance that he'd be okay, or because he thought he touched something that was at school.
Now he calls on me from his bed and if I don't respond, he starts screaming at the top of his lungs. He calls out for help at all hours of the night making out like there's an emergency, which I imagine is how it might feel in his mind, but to an observer the issues are mostly minor or nonsensical.
If I attend to him, he'll often start with one reason for needing my help, and then add more reasons as he discovers it wasn't a big enough reason to warrant shouting for help. For example, he'll shout for help and say his arm hurts, I'll go to see it and look it over and he'll mention something that happened months ago where someone tapped him in the arm and I'll explain that it looks okay and I don't think that that incident would have any relation to the pain he felt. At that point the pain might get better, but as I turn to leave the room he'll ask for help with something else, he might say he thinks he's peeing (he's never wet the bed) or that something is bleeding, these are actually used often and involve having to check, which I think might be an OCD compulsion.
The sudden change in his nighttime behaviour seems to be related to the recent onset of OCD which has progressed quite rapidly. It started with excessive hand washing after touching anything that has been at school and has progressed to screaming fits, avoidance and reassurance seeking.
He'll avoid areas of the floor he thinks he stepped on after coming home from school (before showering and changing) as those areas are "dirty". He's in an almost constant state of panic and will scream if he accidentally touches something he thinks might have been at school, or was in close proximity to something that was at school.
Today he came home panicking because someone breathed near him. He's still concerned that his face is dirty because of it despite showering after school and washing his face before bed.
No amount of reassurance or guidance seems to have any effect. He hears me, but the OCD is louder. Where he used to be an exceptionally logical thinker, his ability to use logic seems to be trapped in a dungeon of uncertainty and doubt.
I've been trying to communicate to him that it's not acceptable to scream at the top of your lungs in the middle of the night, but he tells me it's not him, that he can't control it, he sometimes even pretends it didn't happen, which he eventually admitted was made-up because he didn't want to get into trouble for screaming in the middle of the night.
While learning to accept uncertainty might be the key to fighting OCD, it's not quite so easy when you have ASD.
Can anyone offer some advice in helping my son manage his OCD so that he can take control of his life again, I'm afraid he's going to cut himself off from all the things he loves and I feel incredibly powerless to help him at the moment.