Published on 12, July, 2020
My kiddo is 5 and nonverbal autistic (and possibly ADHD) her dad and I are both autistic with ADHD too. We co-parent.
My kid loves being off school and having extra time at home, but struggles to sleep and cope with the routine change. I think maybe they miss their friends too. Its their first year at school and they have struggled with both the holidays and returning to school so far.
During holidays they tend to want to lie in their bed all morning playing with toys, their Ipad and chattering to me. They can be pushed to get dressed and do things with me but this seems to cause them stress, although by the afternoon they are usually happy to get up and do things, but even then are much more cuddly than usual and seem to need more attention and reassurance, this would imply to me that they are slightly unsettled.
They rarely have meltdowns at home but during school holidays its much more common, especially at bed time, which is very out of character for them.
At bedtime in the holidays they need me in the room till they fall asleep most days and seem to experience insomnia, only being able to drop to sleep in the early hours of the morning. Both of which are unusual for them unless ill or distressed for some reason. I have tried to implement a holiday routine but as they want to stay in bed all morning thats been difficult to implement and im unsure if its better to let them be happy in bed or push them to get up. We do lots of activities and move around a lot when they are up, so I dont think this issue is related to inactivity.
Any advice on how to help them get up or settle down to bed or cope with a big routine change would be appreciated.
We have tried to explain holidays/school terms but its still too complex to explain without words it seems.
Im a first time parent and have no support network so I really appreciate any help or support
Hi NAS93971, Sorry to hear you and your child are having some difficulty with the change in routine. We have some advice pages here on the NAS site that touch on some of the topics you've mentioned so I'm going to link a couple of them. There is an advice page on dealing with changes in routine which you can find here - https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/behaviour/dealing-with-change/all-audiences - as well as a page on meltdowns and how to try and prevent or manage their severity which is here - https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/behaviour/meltdowns/all-audiences. We also have a guide for parents on sleep and autism - https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/physical-health/sleep/parents - with some suggestions for helping a child go to sleep and some of the potential causes of insomnia, as well as links at the bottom of the page to other organisations that can help on this issue. Hope this is of some help, Ross - mod