Sleep part 1

 I wrote this back in January, but had not made the blog to post it back then, so enjoy and I’ll write an update as things have changed for us this year already!

I’ve debated starting a blog for a really long time, why? Because I love to talk and because life is a journey of learning and discovery and sometimes it’s good to take the time to write that thought process down and share it. The topic I think about writing on most? Sleep!

I have a crazy 6 year old who has a PDA profile of autism and has sensory issues. This means sleep is definitely not how we expected in the is house! I’ve listened to podcasts on sleep, I’ve memorised lists of sleep hygiene habits, I’ve put as many red lights in my house as ‘one of those’ streets in Amsterdam. I’ve bought a diffuser to emit lavender, I’ve made a compression sheet, weighted blanket, I’ve tried different light combinations, delta wave music, sleep meditations, de-regulating bedtime (Absolute disaster)… The list goes on!

One of the most helpful posts I’ve ever read was by another parent who linked sensory needs to bedtime. A lot of our routine comes from this and we went from a lot of wake-ups and a horrid evening to better once we played with ideas from that article, but the age old problem of bedtime being super late and mornings being torture pervaded.

So, back to de-regulating bedtime. What I’ve discovered is if left to it, my daughter, will not sleep until she’s about to drop and that will be 2am, her sleep is less restful, I’m exhausted, she’s exhausted, melting down, which in turn delays sleep further (thanks cortisol) and we end up in a dreadful state. Equally routine can be a massive problem! The only routine a demand avoidant person can handle is one that they are in control of!

So bedtime starts with me opting to go to bed (now I appreciate this is very much an individual thing, some kids would wave goodnight and read or play lego all night long. Selfishly if the child was responsible enough for this and would let me sleep, I’d take it! As it is mine has separation anxiety, which I am totally exploiting in this one instance and feel little shame about it. Lets face it mostly it’s draining/exhausting, and a whole post of it’s own. So, the choice is more food or head upstairs, we head upstairs and have a dimly lit room with a red/orange/pink light. If she’s wired, she dances, jumps on the bed etc, until some of the energy is out, when she starts to flag, I read stories, we have a floating rule of three smaller books, or a set number of pages with bigger books with a nightly negotiation of more/less.

After books is brushing teeth. I use an electric toothbrush which is too noisy, so I put her brush with paste next to her and leave the room to do mine, I don’t prompt her to brush. However when I return, it’s my turn to go over them. This is one of our few hard rules, she has three cavities, that we are trying not to worsen. The rule is if teeth aren’t brushed, then there are no sugar containing foods to be eaten. We spoke together about this, that division of responsibility is for me as a parent to keep her and her teeth safe. Her choice is to keep her teeth clean or not, but that has consequences. The natural consequence is pain and dental work and that’s not a consequence I’m willing to let happen to her. She’s chosen her own toothbrush and has her favourite toothpaste, and these are always available to her and a couple of spares if she wants to change her mind. We spoke at length about germs and cavities and that it’s Paddy the dentist that says I have to have a turn not me. The last one helps tremendously. Thankfully my kid has the understanding for this! I don’t know what I’d do if she didn’t. The cavities are the consequence of her not letting me brush for a very long time. We battled for a long time, and tried lots of things before this point! It can be really hard, supporting body autonomy and personal choice and not being an irresponsible parent!

After teeth it’s drop the light to completely dark or candle, it’s always candle in our house.  Again I’m thankful she’s responsible enough for this. When she was younger it was a red light but that was too boring, light changing things were too stimulating, so the flicker of the candle provides the right balance of not boring, not distracting. But this is something that will be individual to each person and requires time, to work out. Novelty means any change keeps them awake at first!

We then listen to audiobooks, we’ve been through the Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett many many times, and the Hiccup series by Cressida Cowell. Currently we’re using Borrowbox which is free audiobooks from the library, but Audible has had a decent trade out of me. Noise is something we’ve experimented with too. White noise was irritating, sleep meditation too demanding, with my child chanting through it that she would not do or imagine ANYTHING they said. There are some nice non demanding sleep stories on Youtube, but bright screen is something we avoid after dinner so it would be placed face down, plus they tended to be too short, my child doesn’t drift off in 20 minutes, I had the same issue with the moshi twilight stories. The other nice thing is I like the stories, so instead of this being torture, we snuggle and listen together and hopefully she’s learning that It’s ok, to be still, it’s ok to not fall asleep straight away, there’s no need to stress, just enjoy the process.

So many of us as adults don’t sleep because we are anxious about not sleeping. The downside of stories like that is they can be too stimulating, we have favourite bits of stories she will anticipate and wait for. I can imagine for some kids it would just be overwhelming from start of finish. I’ll also admit I didn’t switch it off straight away last night because it was too exciting (oops!) and listened to another 15 minutes or so.

And like that, magic we sleep, right? Nope, there’s always the actually I’m hungry, I’m too hot every night. This does try my patience some nights. What we have is one of those cooling pads for pets from B and M that she will use and a coolpak from the freezer wrapped in a pillowcase so she can fidget and cool herself down. Cooler room temperatures is a sleep aid, tho I haven’t managed to work our thermostat to try it and I’m a wimp and love it warm, despite the research!

I’ve tried not feeding her, it didn’t work and when there are other food issues (another post in the making) in the end, while we have restrictions about what food, the sensory feedback really helps her, so she tends to crunch on frozen berries (sorry teeth I know this isn’t great and if I could find a better solution I’d take it, chewies don’t work for us, tho I’m sure they would for some!) So I tramp up and down the stairs, the dim light goes back on until those words “I’m full up” the light gets turned off so it’s just candle, and yay, we’ve aced it.

This isn’t the routine any parent actually wants is it?! We’d started earlier but it generally ends up between 10.30 and 12 that she sleeps and if I start earlier then there’s just more procrastination. If we start later, she sleeps later, and that is even more exhausting.

Most recently was the decision to try and shift her circadian rhythm to a ‘better pattern’ by waking her 15 minutes earlier each day to get to a sensible time each morning. This time was not arbitrary, it was simply the time we’d need to be up to car share so we can get out and about easily. (I should write about public transport another day!) and logically starting the bedtime routine earlier. The result wasn’t the amazing solution I thought, by two weeks in, my daughter and I were both exhausted, bags under her eyes, teary several times a day, crying at night because she wanted to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come, average sleep time still 11.30pm.

Now I’m a Christian (this will probably come up in other posts) and so as I do I prayed about this and what to do, was I being too radical hoping it would work in as short at two weeks? Was I torturing us both by continuing. My body said, let’s just have a couple of lie ins, my mind wrestled with being weak, the pressure of a husband struggling with the fact every other parent he knew put their kids to bed and cuddled on the sofa, watched a film etc, where as our routine meant him heading off for his chill out time on the PC at 9.30 and then going to bed at 11.30 alone while I was with our 6 year still lying with her awake. And then as I scrolled Facebook the next day I came across SallyCat’s post on her sleep. Now I’m not saying my daughter does or doesn’t have the condition spoken about, but the fact she physically cannot sleep until 11.30 sunk in and so now we’re on a new path.

This path isn’t a straight forward one, it means finding the finances for a second car so I don’t feel so stuck at home. It means we’re going to re-vamp the bedroom in the half term so she has a double bed of her own, so I can help settle her. It’s accepting she’s going to need that for a while longer. It means my husband will get to sleep in his own room again, rather than my daughter’s bed she never took to because she couldn’t bear to be in there alone! It means quitting on that ideal of snuggly evenings, but instead being intentional that as she sleeps till 9.30 of a morning when allowed to, we can have snuggly weekend mornings and reconnect as a couple. Which is something that is overdue.

So yeah, my advice for any parents out there struggling is try to enjoy the process! This is a toughy, but honestly the calmer I am, the easier this is. The more I let go of other demands I place on myself the less stressed I am. The other is have a wind down process but allow the child to feel in control if they are demand avoidant, be that PDA or other factors making them feel that way. The end of the day is the worst, because the whole day has been an assault of demands even in a low arousal setting. So try to chill out, relax and hope you can model all that calm your child needs and that you can get some sleep too!