Seasonal Not-Sleeping
1am.
2.30am.
Those are the times that my 9 1/2 year old son Charlie has fallen asleep these past two nights/mornings. DeeDee in Canada noted in a comment (on the post Neurodiversity Is More Than Skin Deep (#543)) that the season—this holiday season of Xmas carols piped in everywhere, tinsel and holly a-decking the walls, that anticipation of the holiday in the air (and of time off from school)—have been affecting her son:
“it’s hard for the mind and body to rest when there is so much going on every day.”
To the season of season not-sleeping….. (We’ll see what time Charlie falls asleep tonight…..)
4 opinions for Seasonal Not-Sleeping
Julia
Dec 17, 2006 at 6:46 pm
The only one of mine consistently falling asleep well these days is the “most likely to be neurotypical” one, the one whose autism label from the school district I question.
S. is just going nuts from schedule disruptions. (I expect he’ll calm down again around Jan. 10 or 15 or so.) C.’s sleep schedule is disrupted, napping during the day and singing for an hour or two after her twin brother has fallen asleep. (Fortunately, he can sleep almost through anything, including, apparently, having her climbing all over him.)
And I’m sure they’re picking up on their parents’ stress — there are things that people expect us to be doing for Christmas, and some of those are things we really don’t want to do, but also don’t want to put up with the scolding/nagging from other people, so we have to decide for a number of things, do we do X or bear the unpleasant social consequences?
Kristina Chew, PhD
Dec 17, 2006 at 10:50 pm
I tend to do X……..Charlie senses our stress, for sure! Yes, I would say mid-January is when things will return to “routine,
finally—then Charlie has a week off in February…..
Julia
Dec 17, 2006 at 11:34 pm
We’re going with consequences on some things.
Now, there are things that are only half-expected that I’m happy to throw myself into. :) C. and T.’s classmates got toys from them on the last day of school, for example.
Spring break here is in March. So we get the Thanksgiving interruption, the long Christmas/New Year’s break, 1 week in March and it’s over around Memorial Day, and then we have to find the summer routine. (Nobody in the household qualifies for school during the summer.)
Autism Vox » Charlie takes it all in
Jan 6, 2007 at 1:31 pm
[…] At my mention of that word, my son Charlie, who has celiac disease and who has been on the gluten-free casein-free diet for the past 7 1/2 years jumped up from the couch. He was on the verge of dozing off—Charlie has been having trouble going to sleep and a nap at noon means he will not fall asleep till the wee hours of the morning. I recently found some gluten-free rolls that he loves and now found a pizza that he likes, too—-when Charlie was younger, he did not seem to notice if we ate pizza or bagels or bread if we ate them in front of him. A few years ago, he became much more aware of what my husband Jim and I do and, in particular, of what we were eating—and he wanted to eat the same things as us. […]
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