It’s 3:00 a.m.
Filed Under (Safety, Sleep, autism) by Estee on 16-08-2010
I am writing this at 3:00 a.m. I left Adam’s room at approximately ten o’clock hoping he would go go sleep. I know I did, but I suddenly woke up at two. I was hoping to fall back to sleep but decided to heed some sage advice and not fight it. I’ve heard that if you cannot go back to sleep, just get up and do something else. The sleep will come.
Sleep is a huge issue for many of us. I remember three years of complete sleep deprivation after Adam was born: three hours of soothing and rocking him alone in a dark room, creeping out of his room on all fours because the floors were creaky and would wake him, only to have him wake up every hour and a half anyway. I remember feeling tired, frustrated and this certainly had an effect on the way I interacted with Adam in the early years, and I didn’t even get a reprieve by way of a naptime. I tried to “Feberize” him to no avail. I was always flabbergasted that Adam could keep on going on such little sleep. Later on, we discovered Melatonin which is the only thing that usually helps him fall asleep when he is particularly wired, except for these monthly anomolies where it has zero effect, and I have not discovered the reason specific to Adam.
As I began to quietly descend the stairs in what is typically called the dark night of the soul, coined by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I hear Adam mumbling softly to himself — quite a change from the infant and toddler days when he would cry. In fact, my office is directly underneath his bedroom and I can hear him moving about contentedly right now.
I write this because it’s another feat in our coexistence as two different kinds of people. It used to be that Adam would make much more noise and I would spend hours trying to settle him. Perhpas because of experience, knowing that autistic cicadian rhythms have been reported to be different in autistic individuals, I have decided on an alternate strategy: not to fight it. I am teaching Adam how to stay alone in his room quietly and do other things. It still requires some of my effort, my reminding (and perhaps some dark circles under my eyes in the morning), but I know it will be worth it as he is growing and maturing. As he grows older, he will be able to use this time to read, study, work on the computer, but right now I would hesitate putting him on the computer because he will gear him up rather than wind him down.
This happens to Adam about once a month, I’ve recorded. He seems to wake at 2:00 a.m. and he goes to camp or school and has, usually a fabulous day while I am otherwise dreary-eyed. Still, I am discovering that I too am developing a remarkable energy that I didn’t think I had before. It’s amazing how things don’t feel as difficult if we try to work with the circumstances. In fact, I planned on reading and writing a bit before I realized that Adam was awake. I’ve ensured that the house is safe in the event I do doze off and he decides to roam, and this might be in large part why I can relax. So far, Adam stays in his room.
I suppose the only thing is my sensitivity to Adam. I didn’t think I heard him at two, although I must have. It would be nice to know thatI can sleep through the night while he does what he has to do….safely. We’re getting there.
I sit here writing sort of amazed at how far I’ve come in this. Another milestone, perhaps, not for Adam, the autistic child, but for Estee, the autism mom. It’s past three a.m. now. The dark night will quickly turn to dawn.
ESTÉE KLAR
TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA
Writer.Curator of Art. Founder of The Autism Acceptance Project. Mother of Adam. I like to write about our journey, musings, attitudes towards autism.
My parents gave up on that fight too… and it was a fight! They learned that I am a natural night owl. I could sleep all day on command, but not at night. I learned to just quietly amuse myself with books, writing or drawing if I woke up at 3:00am or just couldn’t go to sleep. The only time my parents had to be involved was if I woke up in distress from a nightmare or from an illness. Both were rare. Once they stopped fighting my circadian rhythms, we all slept better!
Working and going to school was murder for someone like me who is a natural night owl, but I’ve since found a way to do university on my own time and also have a job that allows me the ability to set my own schedule for the most part. I’m much healthier and happier because of it.
Thanks for the contribution, D.J. It’s 7:30 a.m. now. Adam is busy and I actually believe that when I went to sleep at 10 p.m. he was still awake. In other words, Adam has not slept all night. I managed to get some sleep in between. Adam still has energy, he will go to camp as usual today and likely be just fine (as he has been before). Tonight, he’ll be asleep at 8 p.m. (based on patterns) and be sleeping again through the night.
I do that on occasion as well: stay up for about 24 – 36 hours and then my circadian rhythms settle into a routine. It happens every few months or so, depending on what’s happening in my life. I’ve stopped stressing over it because it hasn’t hurt me in the last 35 years of life. :^) I think that’s a normal thing for those of us on the spectrum!
If Adam is not likely to leave the house or get into anything, then you likely don’t need to stay up with him. My parents never did and I never got into trouble. It became a household rule that if I am up all night, I am to stay in my room and quietly do something like read or draw. As long as I could get up for school in the morning, my parents didn’t care when I slept, although I had to be in my room, preferably in bed by 8:30pm. If sleep didn’t come, oh well… as long as I stayed in my room or didn’t get into anything when I wandered the house.
If I did leave my room, it was to just walk around the house quietly and enjoy the fact that the dark feels so good on my eyes and senses. It was the only time when I was not overloaded or in pain, so my parents gave me that, thank goodness! I still do it to this day: stand in the living room and stare out the window and watch the stillness of the world at night. Most people miss out on this wonderful time! Now, I’m grown up and own my own house, I have no one fretting if I’m up and I can stand out on my back deck in the summer listening to the frogs, crickets and breathing that wonderful night air (which also smells nicer than day air)
Most NT’s get all out of shape about their kids being up at night, but the truth is, most of us require less sleep than the average person. Also, it may help to know that when many of us hit the teen years, we sleep more. We may still have the “up all night” thing happening, but are less likely to just take off. My parents had to worry more about my NT brother sneaking out of the house at night to hang out with his buddies than they ever had with me. I was just happy to draw cartoons in my room. :^)
Adam is good. He stays in his room and I also have nice looking safety locks so I’m extra-assured. However, as a mom, I think I must be hyper-sensitive to his movements, although I couldn’t beleive how quiet he was .I literally thought that I had woken up on my own (because I’ve been doing that anyway even when Adam is fast asleep), and then as I crept down the staircase I head him quietly talking to himself and singing. I did catch some sleep in between. I’m also not sure if he had made a noise that woke me without realizing it.
I’m really writing, however, because I’m most excited about your comment regarding teen years and sleeping in more. I believe another autstic person said the same thing to me….woo hoo!!!!
That’s great that Adam stays in his room. My general approach has to do what you did, to ‘go with the flow’ and not fight something Charlie getting up. I found Michelle Dawson’s post on circadian rhythms very helpful, especially in reframing 2 or 3 am wake-ups not as ‘abnormal,’ but different.
Then I found myself reading some interviews with artists who described themselves as night owls. As it is summer vacation now for Charlie, we’ve decided to just let him sleep (including mid-afternoon naps) as he will.
Yes Charlie does sleep in more now that he is a teenager, as DJ notes. That means 8am which some people would not not consider ‘sleeping in.’ I suppose it’s all relative.