To Sleep, Perchance To Dream—or Just to Sleep
No surprise here:
Children with sleep disorders can impair parents’ functioning.
Further: “Mothers may be especially sensitive to child sleep disorders.”
A study of how parents of children with sleep problems are more likely to have sleep-related problems themselves appears in the March 2007 issue of the Journal of Family Psychology.
Fortunately for us, melatonin has helped Charlie to sleep regular hours and to go to sleep at a regular hour—and he seems quite pleased with this, too. He woke up at 4.30am this morning and ran into our room. After some talking and jumping, he fell back asleep for almost two hours after which he requested to put on his clothes, shoes, and coat. Until the bus came, Charlie stamped at the slush in the driveway while saying the names of his teachers (fortunately, we can not only see Charlie through the front windows of the house, but we can hear him). He had a full day of school, after school program (he made pancakes) and a ride on the train with Jim to a nearby town for a special dinner at a sushi restaurant (just the two of them—-I had to grade papers in my office).
I am certainly less stressed than I was two years ago because I know that, however little sleep he gets, Charlie wakes up so glad to go to school.
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POSTED IN: Health, Medicine, Parenting, Psychology
11 opinions for To Sleep, Perchance To Dream—or Just to Sleep
Daisy
Mar 1, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Amigo had night terrors when he was 15 months old. I was doing an internship with a 50 minute commute each way, and I still don’t know how I did it on so little sleep.
mcewen
Mar 1, 2007 at 11:42 pm
A good nights sleep and I can cope with anything the next day. I don’t think it’s fully appreciated how drastic sleep deprivation can be. I feel that on the whole we had got off quite lightly. [phases rather than permanent] However, I had a pal with a child who wakes several times a night and has done so since birth. No wonder there are so many ‘only’ children.
Best wishes
Jez Rourke
Mar 2, 2007 at 2:34 am
Kind of a coincidence. I was trying to fall asleep last night which wasn’t going well, so I starting thinking. I have a lot of nightmares (medication related) and I wondered to myself, do autistic people dream? I’m really curious. My daughter sleeps like a log. Once I get her to sleep which requires a lot sometimes, but she never wakes up and she never says anything about dreaming. Not that she would, but she might make some kind of reference to it…. or if she had a bad dream she might wake up scared. She doesn’t ever do either.
So it occurs to me, the question. Do autistic people dream? I’d love the answer from an autistic person.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Mar 2, 2007 at 2:40 am
I think Charlie does—once he was talking in his sleep but I can’t remember what he was saying…..it was about one of his “favorite things.” He used to have a lot of trouble sleeping and then “sleep like a log”; the melatonin has really helped.
Autism Vox » Something To Make You Think
Mar 2, 2007 at 3:26 am
[…] For the past year, it has seemed to be the right thing to keep writing a daily account of Charlie’s and our life on Autismland. While I cannot guarantee that the end of our story will be happily ever after, things for Charlie have been settling into what appears to be a quite happy state. He likes school so much that he wakes up early for it. He is learning to read. We live with my in-laws, who are both disabled and who both have numerous medical issues and Charlie has been as peaceful easy-feeling as ever in learning how to live with other people, and especially with those whose needs far exceed his. […]
Kassiane
Mar 2, 2007 at 4:03 am
Um. Yeah. Autistic people dream. Just like everyone else.
Melatonin gives me night terrors…but I’m a known neurochemical weirdo…particularly in the area of the glands at the center of the brain (pineal & pituitary…)
Jez Rourke
Mar 2, 2007 at 5:49 am
Thanks Kass….
I was really curious. For years and years I don’t think I dreamed. At least I didn’t remember my dreams. Now it’s just unbelievalble paxil nightmares. My two neurotypical nephews (brothers) both have night terrors occasionally. It’s awful. They usually have them when they’re way overtired.
Sleeping should peaceful as far as I’m concerned.
Kristina, that’s so cute that Charlie was talking in his sleep. I’m a known sleeptalker (to few people) and I do believe I’ve said the best things ever without knowing it.
How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep
Feb 9, 2008 at 9:20 am
[…] the parents) is a fairly frequent topic. For the past year-plus, we’ve been giving Charlie melatonin, an over-the-counter dietary supplement, to help him sleep, after a period of him falling asleep every night past midnight at the earliest (and having […]
navi
Mar 9, 2008 at 11:25 am
I’ll have to ask my kid’s dr about melatonin… I tend not to consider his sleep problematic, because I’m so used to his father’s sleep problems.
Jez, is your child verbal, then I take it, because you say she doesn’t talk about dreams?
Maybe she dreams about real life. My dreams are so typical I don’t remember them. And when I do remember them, its not enough detail to bother discussion. When I was waitressing at a busy restaurant, I dreamt of work all of the time, and always felt exhausted, because it was like I was running in my sleep (needless to say, I quit that job - I was taking ‘eating, sleeping and breathing’ my work to the nth degree…)
I think my son must have wonderful dreams, as he never wants to wake up, even when he wakes up rested
Nate
Apr 7, 2008 at 12:53 pm
My autistic son is totally non-verbal, and this is an area of interest to me as well. So if there are any autistics who can communicate with a nuro-typical, let me know what you dream about! As I often dream about flying, or odd combinations of people and stresses in the day I was just in, I would love to know what sort of dream an autistically wired brain comes up with. How are they the same, how do they differ, how do you relate to the dream memories after you are awake? Sometimes my dreams are so real, it takes me a second or two to realize they were dreams, is that true for you as well? Thanks,
Nuro-dad
Bonnie Sayers
May 6, 2008 at 11:19 pm
FYI - The quite pleased link does not work.
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