Does neuro-spicy and sleep go together well? In many households, including my own, the answer is no!
If you have been living with a child who has autism/ADHD/PDA while attempting to get any sleep yourself - are you okay? That is tough! I remember in tricky times with my daughter, actually getting to a place of hallucinating due to tiredness and becoming very unwell. Although she managed to catch up on sleep throughout the day, I had to continue (or attempt to) to work and raise my youngest child.
Sleeping is such a complex topic when mixed with neuro-spicy needs.
From a PDA perspective, sleep could be seen as a demand, even if you personally are not demanding it. It can still be seen as the thing that everyone else has to do, so I don't want to or cant bring myself to do it.
ADHD children can become more heightened and hyper throughout the day and their brains cant switch off, on demand, like we expect. Some children, my own included, can complain that their brains are too busy at night time. If a child has been at school all day, therefore, had to be very controlled all day, this may make bedtimes worse.
Other children can have separation anxiety or phobias and fears. They may want to sleep with their parent or carer. They may be frightened to be in their bedroom alone. It is society that deems it socially acceptable for children to be in their own rooms with lights off by 12 months of age. These recommendations do not take into consideration neuro-spicy needs.
For some children they may experience anxiety and panic attacks through the night.
One of my biggest frustrations (I have many) is when parents and carers are told to take away the TV or the IPAD at bedtime. In some cases this can set up the parents to fail because the condition of sensory processing disorder, alongside autism/ADHD and/or PDA is not fully understood. For some children it is exactly the Ipad or TV that they need in order to sleep. Let me explain.
Many children with Autism and ADHD have sensory processing disorder. As humans, we all (regardless of neuro spicy tendencies) get millions of bits of information sent to our senses every minute of every day. For children with sensory processing disorder this can feel like an overwhelming amount of sensory input to our systems, every moment of every day. Some children with Autism/ADHD/PDA can be very sensitive to this and they are unable to filter out this stimuli as quickly as perhaps a neuro typical individual. All day their brains are super busy.
At night time the TV noise goes off, the lights go off, the background noise from outside stops, the people stop talking, the appliances in the house switch off. The world dies and goes silent. For some children with sensory processing disorder this can be really hard to switch their brains into this silent, no stimuli mode and it can actually create anxiety or panic attacks. It can, for some children, put their bodily systems into fight or flight.
This is when you may find your child making lots of excuses to get up in the middle of the night to interact with you and/or their environment. They may sensory seek. They may be hungry. They may suffer anxiety. They may have meltdowns. They may be quite happy playing in their room noisily until 4am. My daughter regularly used to use this time to want to make cakes, play with slime or paint my bathroom floor in toothpaste (sensory seeking). Very frustrating at 3am!
For my daughter we had to leave all the lights on in the house, every single one. Yes, I had to learn to sleep in broad daylight! My daughter had to have on her TV and YouTube playing on her Ipad. Apparently, YouTube noise feels more like the environmental noise of chit chatter than a movie on the TV does. This routine regulated her enough to fall asleep. This light and noise input would settle her anxiety just enough for her to be able to fall asleep (with melitonin). This meant I could sleep, her siblings could sleep, she could sleep, she was in a better regulated mood the next day and of course more able to attend schoool the following day also. All positives.
Although this may sound ludicrous to the rest of the world, it kind of makes sense if you really look at SPD (sensory processing disorder) and the effects.
Taking away the Ipad doesn't always work.