how do i get a 5 year old autistic boy and a 3 year old to sleep alone .

[angel1984]

my son is turning 6 years old and has autism How do i get him to sleep alone with out complaining he is scared? and how do i get my 3 year old to sleep in her room with out coming into my bed. i have tried lights on ,toys sleeping with her every thing

[Sally44]

Ahhhh.  If anyone has the magic answer out there practically every parent with an autistic child will be wanting to hear it.
My son is 7 and usually sleeps with me or his dad.  I also have a 9 year old daughter who gets jealous that her brother sleeps with a parent and therefore she insists she sleeps with us as well.  I get a better sleep if they are with me because they don't repeatedly wake me up because they are 'scared' or 'frightened of the dark'.
But recently things have got better.  Firstly I am trying a reward system (it is similar to 1-2-3 magic which is a really good system you could look into to see if it could help).  Secondly I have installed a dimmer switch.  If an autistic child has fears/phobias of the dark no amount of talking with get them over it.  I do encourage him by using Social Stories.  He sleeps in the same room as his sister at present.  I don't think he would tolerate sleeping in his own room on his own yet.  We have also let him choose a big cuddly toy that he sleeps with.  This is a big soft shark called 'sharky' who is my sons 'friend' and who will chase and bite anything that scares him.

It all depends how big the problem is to you.  I am working on it and I am sure he will be sleeping on his own one day.  My husband is Greek.  In their culture there is not this need/desire for individual beds and bedrooms.  They tend to sleep together more often (after all they have siesta as well) and much later than we do with our children.

With the reward system both he and his sister slept every night last week in their own beds.  But I must admit I also like to snuggle up to them.  And I think if your son, being autistic, wants to snuggle up to you it could be really good for both of you and you could even turn it around and use it as a time to tell him a story, or chat with him.

[Jaylor24]

Hi, my son is 3 1/2 and has PDD NOS (autism) and has a twin sister.
I could not get the two of them to sleep, yes the do share a room.  They would run around in and out of their room and playing in their room until about 11 at night, and no matter what I did I couldnt get them to stay in bed and they would end up falling asleep in my bed, which really isnt good either.  UNTIL I changed it and made a routine everynight.  No matter what at 7:30 we have a small snack and a drink and wind down at 7:50 we brush teeth, wash up and go to the bathroom.  At 8:00 they each pick a book and we all sit down and I read it to them.  At about 8:10 I say ok guys bed time, lights out...I tuck them both in bed, put on their night lights, give them kisses and I take turns sitting next to them by their beds and the first night they were both sleeping with in 10 minutes and this has been going on for over a month, they have both been asleep every night since with in 45 minutes of me sitting there, most of the time its really 15 minutes I stay in there but every so often one takes a little bit longer to go to sleep.  This is over a month now is its working great and the sleep in their beds now, through the night with the exception daughter who wakes up during the night and comes into my bed, but I dont care so much about that for now...shes going to bed early and in her bed for most of the night so that works for me :)

[MJIthewriter]

These I'm not sure if they are related to my PDD NOS or not, but
I too have trouble sleeping. It seems like I run on a nocturnal sleep cycle. At least as an adult now I know to be quiet around those times of night. I have to literally tire myself out to exhaustion before I can sleep.
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Fear:  
Monster stories: I took such things like the boogyman and monster under the bed tales way too seriously.

A lot of times my lack of ability to sleep was from either a nightmare or sleep paralysis.  I remember distinctly having one such incident when I was 5 years old.

It was more like a nightmare thing. I dreamt I saw a house in the neighborhood and all of a sudden black circles just covered the image like swiss cheeze. I think I may have also felt vibration or the feeling of falling...  There was something physical feeling about it... Anyways that frightened me for whatever reasons.
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Falling asleep:

Often there was a long wait time between the time I closed my eyes and the time sleep would start. I remember seeing lots of blinking bright spots that would occur around that time. The bright lights seemed to startle me and make falling asleep hard.
I'd also have times waking up with the feeling of falling, and possibly sleep paralysis along with it.

I don't remember everything, but I do remembering praying for a long time that God would give me a good night sleep without nightmartes. I had some kind of ritual thing I said for a long time.
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I still get SP, but after doing exstensive reseach on it, somehow I've managed to train myself to not be afraid of it most of the times it happens. If I can't break the SP cycle I stay awake for 15-30 minutes and that allows me to fall asleep again.

[888mom]

I don't like sleeping alone.  Then again, I don't think I really have my whole life.  I had 2 sisters I shared a bedroom with growing up, in college I had roommates, and then I got married.  After our daughter was born, we had her crib in our room next to our bed until she was 18 months old, and after that she'd come in on occasion and still does at 2 1/2.  We just don't make a big deal about it.  We have a king size bed.  If we only had a queen size, we'd probably put an extra toddler bed or twin bed in the room.  My youngest sister growing up would crawl into bed with my parents or with me.  She really didn't want to be alone at all.  

I have always been afraid of the dark, as an adult as well as a child.  A tiny nightlight just doesn't do it.  I need a night lamp, something about 15 watts, and if the room is too big, I need two 15 watt lamps in it.  I also leave the bathroom light on.  I wake up from some dreams, and it's like you open your eyes and you have remnants of the dream in front of your face, like they are hovering in front of you.  Have a nightmare, and those things can be a tiger, psycho killer, or a TRex or a veloceraptor.  I find if a room is well enough lit (but not too bright as that makes me not sleep well either), then those vision dream remants when I wake don't happen. My sister has the same problem being afraid of the dark.  I think it is a normal thing that some people have, and shouldn't feel ashamed of as they get older.  

Bedtime rituals do help kids fall to sleep faster, usually.  If you think about it, us adults probably do bedtime rituals for ourselves. I always read a book before bed.  Lately I've gotten into doing a crossword as well as reading.   Now, with my daughter, the bedtime rituals never seemed to work to get her to go to sleep right away.  My mom said it never worked for me and one of my sisters either to get to sleep, but it helped us at least get in the bedtime mindset and stay put in our rooms.  But it worked for my brother and the other sister and they'd be out in 10 minutes flat.  We gave up on it working for our daughter, and now we put her in her bed with a couple toys that we reserve for bedtime only.  She plays for about 45 minutes and then falls asleep.  They are comfort toys.  We remove them after she's fallen asleep.  She's obsessed with Backyardigans, so going to sleep playing with Pablo and Uniqua makes her very happy and I think she has better dreams.  She also has an Austin stuffed doll that she sleeps with overnight.  It takes me 45 minutes as an adult to fall asleep.  So I kind of understand why my daughter has problems.  Some people just can't fall asleep as easily, rituals or not.... but you have to try everythign to see what works.  Drinking warm milk used to help me fall asleep, but I think I've become lactose intolerant in the last few years so I don't do that anymore.

[mjthewriterdad]

Just something to try.  It may or may not work.

Try this:

1 Select a nite when you can stay up (this may take a couple or 3 or 4 hours)
2 go thru the bedtime routine (very important)
3  When you put him down for bed tell him it's bedtime hug/kiss him etc.
4  the first time he gets up pick him up and place him back in bed and just say "it's bedtime"  (this lets him know why he is back in bed)
5  the next time he gets up repeat step 4 but just say "bedtime" (re-inforces the concept)
6 the next time he gets up repeat but don't say anything, just place him back in bed
7  you may have to repeat step 6 many times.  (NT's make the connection that "bedtime = stay in bed" after a few times doing this.  I dunno about autistics, cause-effect and associating things and concepts is more difficult)

no guarantees but worth a try ....