Sleep Lab for autistic Children??? or children in general?

SueB

2262

Posts

EW EXPERT

Latest post on 12 February 2011 - 18:34

thanks so much for the information. I find it amazing that a child who is desperate for the body to rest and rejuvinate, cannot sleep more than 3 hours. In the things I have been reading it suggests that if the child can sleep normal hours for a child 8 or more than the symptoms reduce to a manageble level? Did you find that Desertrose? How is your son functioning now? Sue, I don't know if my son not needing to sleep affected his days because I really dont have anything to compare things to. There weren't any days when he slept more than 3 - 4 hours, and quite often not all at once. However now that he is used to gettting a 'good' nights sleep thanks to melatonin its obvious that when he has a disturbed night it an affect him the next day, and that a few disturbed nights in a row can lead to him being seriously at a disadvantage when it comes to him coping with his day. Last night was one of those nights, he was up and down a lot and when I was trying to get him back to sleep I was mentally re-arranging his day just in case. I would have made sure that his day would have been one of low arousal. Stressors would have been kept to a minimum and a lot of sensory work would have been done with him. As it is tho he still wanted to go out for breakfast and to the cinema this afternoon. However since we've been home he's been bouncing away on his sensory ball so he's obviously feeling the need for calming. We're lucky that he can now suss out what it is he needs to be doing to help himself when he's feeling out of sorts, sometimes he lets us know he needs help and other times he just gets on with helping himself. Going now to therapies - different things work for different children and it really does depend on the child as does a 'lets try one thing at a time approach' or a 'lets try lots of things at the same time and see if it helps'. At different times we've adopted different approaches. There really is no rule of thumb. Your nephew is 4 and I think I would be looking to him having a full sensory profile done, access to PECS or the likes, visual prompts and timetabling/scheduling, and a good routine. The wee boy is probably very confused by the world and one way of helping him cope with his day is to make sure he knows what the next half hour or so will involve. A big white board with whats going to happen, accompanied by pictures of what is going to happen can work wonders when it comes to reducing stress in our children. This is one of the reason why children can sit and watch the same video etc over and over again - they need the familiarity and the security of the sameness. It can also be why some of the children will only eat the same food over and over again and why something cooked even 10 seconds longer than usual can cause great upset to the child. It can terrify the wits out of them. One thing tho - if a child spends a lot of time watching videos etc he won't be burning energy and might not be getting tired enough in the day to need a good sleep at night. I would be looking to make sure the wee boy was getting lots of physical activety - but you would need to make sure its of the right kind because if he has sensory issues the wrong activety can make things worse. If for eg we put my son on a treadmill it would drive him potty, however excercising on a rowing machine does only good things for him. We've done the Listening Programme and we think its helped, its not something you just do once tho and you really do need the child to co-operate with you as it involves 20 mins or so of listening to modified classical music (or nature music) through headphones. In answer to how my sons doing - fantastically well. He's severly autistic, lives at the very severe end of the spectrum and he'll always require round the clock care. it doesn stop him tho from living a very happy and productive life, all things considered :) You come across as a lovely lovely lady, every family who has an child on the spectrum should have an aunty like you in their life. I hope some of this has helped you :) I'm inclined to rabbit on a bit when it comes to our children. :D

RATE IT