Hello all, I appreciate you taking time to read. Some of you may remember me from my other blog, for those that don’t I will introduce myself, I’m Jay, mother of 4, 1 whom has been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC). My son Jayden has autism and can be rather challenging at most times to most people but I’ve always labelled autistic people and my son as misunderstood. I state this because I and many others seem to understand how to deal with someone on the spectrum a lot better than most. A lot of the understanding falls down to patience, calmness and love.
Like I stated earlier, my son can be challenging on most days, mornings are a problem for Jayden. There is an obvious reason for Jayden’s hate of mornings, He doesn’t SLEEP! Well he does sleep but doesn’t get his body’s recommended amount, during the daytime he has a countless amount of energy and a unwilling nature to want to go to sleep. Jayden literally fights his sleep like he’s at war and he’s a pro at it.
Of lately I’ve been putting Jayden to bed roughly the same time every night, including weekends as it helps to regulate his body’s clock. Before I started to do this life was crazy when it came to bedtime. An example of bedtime went like this; 7:30pm- bath-time, 8pm- hot chocolate and movie in bed, 9pm- Jayden requesting another hot chocolate, 10pm- Jayden requesting another movie and another hot chocolate, 11pm- Jayden requesting another hot chocolate, midnight- Jayden requesting another movie, 01:47am- Jayden usually drifted off. Sometimes that pattern would go on until 3am and I wasn’t happy about that at all!
Jayden’s pattern was so messed up that he would miss nursery on most days as he was too tired to even wake up, he was getting up around 1pm in the afternoon. By that time nursery was finished, Jayden wasn’t the type you can wake up and explain that this is why you have to go to bed, it was more of if you wake him when he was tired he would cry and cry, which would escalate or turn into one of his horrible meltdowns were he would destroy the home or take it out on his little sister.
Usually that type of behavior and demands would not be tolerated from a child but with Jayden I’ve had to learn a different approach on how to deal with things. With Jayden being autistic his speech was delayed so he can’t communicate very well and has a lack of reading facial expressions. He also would have plenty of terrible meltdowns which would last for hours on a bad day, the meltdowns can get so out of hand that the siblings would be woken which wasn’t fair on them. Shouting or bribes was not an option when it came to Jayden.
Jayden is now at full time nursery which starts at 9am and finishes at 3:30pm, when he started I thought this just what he needs to enable him to want to sleep earlier as I was sure he’d be worn out after a full day at school. For the first 2 weeks I was baffled to why Jayden still didn’t want to sleep after a long day of school, but by then his body had given in and the battles were beginning to come to an end. His new bedtime routine worked great, It went a bit like this; 6pm- bath-time, 7pm- cartoons, 8pm- hot chocolate and by 9pm Jayden would have fallen asleep.
Now that Jayden seems to have accepted this as his new routine I have been keen on keeping to it as it works well for me and the family. I tend to use visuals as a helping aid to help Jayden to communicate which I find brilliant.
Before Jayden attended full-time nursery he did attend part-time, he did show signs that half day was not long enough but it was not up to me how long he attended. After a day of half day nursery Jayden was very energetic and hyper, defiant and uncontrollable as nursery seemed to have no structure and consisted of doing what you like until he had been collected at 12pm, life at home was different to life at nursery which explained the defiant behaviors as Jayden is not so good with change.
I plan on sticking to this routine but gradually changing the times to an earlier bedtime if possible. I’m not a specialist on working with Autistic children but I can say that I have a lot of positive experiences in helping them or parents change the negative routines into a better one. If you’re struggling and feel stuck you are most welcome to leaving an email or comment for me to respond to with advice, tips or guidance. Thanks again for reading.
Autism awareness 