We have an autistic child and none of us are sleeping well - what can we do?

Sleep: It’s one of the most important factors for our health and wellbeing, but it’s also one of the top concerns for parents of autistic individuals. Whether it's a young child who’s asleep on the taxi ride home from school and then wide awake all night, or a teenager who crashes as soon as they get home but stays up until 2 a.m. — sleep problems are right up there on the list of things that keep us awake at night. And in some cases, they’re what we remember most.

I’ve been there

Sleep was a huge challenge in our house. My son used to travel to and from school in a taxi with another child. They’d both nap away the ride and arrive home feeling completely refreshed. I would try the bedtime routine to see if he would just even lay in bed for a while, but he ended up still bouncing off the walls at 11 p.m. I admit to providing large bags of jelly beans for the transport assistant to feed to him on the journey home in an effort to keep him awake (apologies to the dentist), but it rarely worked. On days when he didn’t have school, he was. As usual, zooming around until he suddenly passed out anywhere and at any time and took a nap. 

“You need to establish a routine,” the key workers would say. Easier said than done, right? We tried everything. Melatonin was slightly useful, if he was in the mood to take it, that is. It would make him drowsy, he’d fall asleep, and I’d think, “Finally, we’re getting somewhere.” But then, like clockwork, he’d ping awake around three hours later to ‘face the day’.

A holistic approach to sleep

The variety of tactics we tried are featured widely in my autism training, but let’s just say that after absolutely years or trying so many things I came to a simple conclusion: sleep is a family affair. It wasn’t just about my son getting enough rest—it was about all of us getting the sleep we needed, including his sister who is two years older.

It might not be conventional, and in our case, it certainly wasn’t! My son ended up sleeping on the sofa in the living room for over two years (yes, you read that right). He simply would not go to bed or to his room, (what I could have done with all that money spent on the extension)! We all spent the evening in the living room, like you do. Our daughter went up to bed, we read her a story and settled her to bed then went back downstairs to watch TV with our son who was lay on either the sofa or the couch. He must have been around five years old at the time.  Basically, when he fell asleep we covered him up, switched off the TV and the light and went to our bedroom where we carried on watching TV and eventually went to sleep. All the doors’ downstairs were locked (including the kitchen), and the ‘baby monitor’ was set so I could hear him when he woke up. Two years of sleeping around five hours a night, bliss. What happened after the two years I hear you ask, well, that’s another chapter!

Finding solutions together

At the end of the day, we learned that sleep isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Sometimes, it’s about finding what works for your family—even if it means thinking outside the box (or sofa). The good news? There’s always a solution, and often, it’s a matter of collaboration. Two heads—or in this case, many heads—are better than one!