Living with a child who is on the autism spectrum can present challenges and rewards, often at the same moment! Any parent knows that standard child-rearing advice often doesn’t work for non-neurotypical children, which is why working with a sleep expert who has hands-on experience of helping autistic children establish a good sleep pattern is vital.
First, many autistic children go to sleep very late, and getting their habits to align with a school routine can be frustrating for parents. If your child is hyperactive it can be useful to check their iron levels as this can be a cause of over-activity. A good multivitamin taken each morning can help substantially, but don’t offer this in the evening as it can further disrupt sleep rhythms.
Second, as the evenings become longer and the daylight level reduces, highly sensitive sleepers struggle, simply because they don’t get enough daylight exposure to generate the necessary sleep hormone to get through the night. Increasing ‘daylight exposure’ is essential. You can give your child the best start by turning on bright lights as soon as they wake up, and using a SAD lamp to boost ‘day light’. Remember not to turn SAD lights on in the evening, or you will overstimulate everybody’s hormone systems!
Third, bath time can be a secret weapon in creating good sleep habits because bathing sets off key biological processes that lead to sound sleep. Children with low or slow melatonin production benefit from a relaxing bath before bed and a tablespoon of Epsom salts or magnesium bath salts also aids sleep.
To help your autistic child settle, light the room with colours that mimic sunset such as orange and pink shaded bulbs, not white or blue-white which can interrupt sleep cues.
Creating a sleep schedule for your child
Beginning now gives children the best chance of having a happy back to school experience. Start by recording what time your child fell asleep last night – was it early enough to have sufficient sleep to be rested and ready for the next day? Sleep deprivation heightens sensory needs which impact behaviour and a child’s ability to learn. If your child’s sleep time is unpredictable, find an average time. Let’s say your child slept at 11pm.
Once you know this, work back an hour – that’s bath time: 10pm.
- After bath time, put your child or teenager in a dimly lit room with no screens (screens disrupt hormone cues) and allow around half an hour ‘wind down’ which can include reading or just looking at books, especially sensory books, listening to audio stories or playing with a collection of toys that are kept especially for bedtime – these toys shouldn’t be electronic.
- Maintain this bedtime for five nights
- Bring bath time forward by 15/20 minutes and bedtime forward by the same amount.
- Maintain this for three nights.
- Every three nights, make the bath and bed times 15/20 minutes earlier until you end up with your ideal bedtime, of let’s say, 8pm.
You can tell if this is the right settling time – normally your child will fall asleep within 20 minutes. Very sensitive children may need to take longer with each stage.
Example using five and three night system to set bath as cue to bed:
X5 nights
10:00pm bath
10:15 – 10:45 settling time/books/stories etc
10:45 lights out.
Child should settle to sleep within 20 minutes.
X3 nights
9:45pm bath
10:00 – 10:30 settling time
10:30 lights out
10:45 asleep.
X3 nights
9:30pm bath
9:45 -10:15 settling time
10:15 lights out
10:30 asleep.
Moving forward with improving your child’s sleep, try to be realistic and patient.
Decide on a goal and focus on how you can best achieve this with your child.
Celebrate every step of progress and remember children need to feel secure and safe to sleep. Visual charts and posters may aid in communicating bedtime expectations.
UK based International Child & Baby Sleep Consultant Rozanne Hay, of Baby Sleep Rescue, brings 28 years of her wealth of experience and knowledge to parents in need of advice and hands-on help. As a mother to 4 children, Rozanne is too well aware of the debilitating effects of broken, sleepless nights. Check out her most recent blog post on Sleep, school and the autism spectrum.