World Autism Awareness Day - insight into Autism...

I can't believe it's a whole year since I posted on my blog! My new post is once again about autism. It's not written to make people feel sorry for me or because I need encouragement - it's written to help other parents of children with autism to know they're not alone, and to give people with no first hand experience of autism an insight into what life with autism can be like. This is written to coincide with World Autism Awareness Day 2014...

Last weekend Sam (who is now 10) went to his first ever sleepover at a friend's house. This was a massive step for him as he generally hates being outside of what he knows and never voluntarily wants to even play at a friend's house, let alone stay over night. However, Sam has made friends with a lovely boy at school, who is very similar to him and sympathetic to Sam's ways. This friend had a party at his house a few weeks ago and after enjoying that a lot, Sam said he would like to go to his house for a sleepover. The time was arranged between us mums and on Saturday afternoon we dropped Sam and his scooter off at his friend's house. Waving goodbye to him was really strange and he looked as if he might cry but managed not to.

The next morning (Mother's Day), we picked Sam up on our way to church. When I first saw him, I thought he looked really tired and when I found out both he and his friend had been awake at 4am, I knew the reason why! Not helped by the clocks changing and having one less hour in bed. Sam's friend's mum said everything had gone well and welcomed Sam to come again anytime. We left and headed to church.

Sam was very quiet in the car and barely spoke despite our questions about how much he enjoyed himself. He almost seemed in shock, which in a way, he was. After church (it being Mother's Day) we headed to McDonalds to get some lunch - this is generally a safe place to get food because all the children like it. Sam remained quiet and kept saying how tired he was. It emerged that having woken up at 4am, Sam was unable to get back to sleep so he simply lay awake until everyone got up at about 7.30. He said he missed me lots - especially in the middle of the night when he couldn't get back to sleep.

The afternoon consisted of the children flopping in front of a film while I did some sewing, and at 5.30pm we ordered food from our local Indian Take Away - my Mother's Day treat! We all ate together having cooked some chicken nuggets for Sam (who doesn't like Indian food) and combining them with popadums and naan bread which he does like. However everything was wrong, the chicken nuggets weren't right, and Sam got upset because he never actually said he wanted them in the first place (we simply cooked them to save him having to decide as decisions cause him major stress). He dissolved next to me in a heap of tears. It was obvious he was just too tired and stressed to cope with even eating so we simply got him ready for bed.

Sam fell asleep almost instantly (even without his prescribed Melatonin!), an exhausted wreck. At 3am he came into our bedroom because he couldn't sleep. He was really worried about going to school the next day and couldn't relax. I took him back to bed and tried to calm him down and encourage him. I said he could listen to his Ipod to help him relax but this only stressed him more because he didn't know which song to listen to, and he felt he had to stay awake to switch it off (the correct thing to do) even though I said he could fall asleep with it on. At 5am I heard loud sobbing. I went back into his room and found Sam in floods of tears - he'd seen the time and realised how long he'd been awake for and now this was stressing him out! I climbed into bed with him and hugged him tight. I told him not to worry about school and promised he could stay at home the next day. Immediately he relaxed and managed to calm down. I said I really felt he needed more time to 'recover' from being away from home and his tiredness. We lay together and chatted about his time away and he finally released some of the details about the time at his friend's house. This seemed to relax him even more. Nothing was bad, it was just all different to normal, and that's what he couldn't cope with. I left him much happier this time, relaxed in the knowledge that he could go to sleep without having to worry about school or being tired at school. I called the school at 5.30am (and left a message) to say he wouldn't be in. He slept until 9am.

Monday was spent relaxing at home, with normal food, drinks, drawing, books, TV and the Wii. He seemed back to his normal self again.

Something that to most children would be exciting, like a sleepover, becomes a massive problem to a child with autism. Being outside a comfort zone can be unbearable. As with everything to do with autism, slow and calm is the way to move forward. By Tuesday, school was not the massive issue it had been on Sunday night/Monday morning, Sam simply needed time...and lots of TLC which I never mind!

Night Terrors

Night terrors are something which affect numerous children including my own son, so I thought this post might help if you too are having problems in this area. My son Archie suffered with night terrors really badly. At one point he was having several every night which was exhausting for all of us. Night terrors can occur when a child is stressed or worried or when there is a change in circumstances (such as moving house) but they can also occur spontaneously.

A night terror is different from a nightmare because with a nightmare, the child wakes up upset after a bad dream & wants to be comforted. With a night terror the child has no idea what is going on. They are effectively still asleep while crying out, screaming, hitting, kicking, biting, being very aggressive, yet have no idea they are doing it. As a mother, the thing you want to do is comfort your child if he/she is in distress. The frustrating thing about a night terror is that although your child is distressed, no amount of comforting will help, and in fact he/she is likely to push you away or become more distressed when you try to help them. The only thing you can do in this situation is try to keep your child from hurting himself/herself. The night terror will eventually stop and it will be completely obvious when it has because the child changes completely. They are no longer distressed, but calm, and confused about why they are awake, and why you are there. They have no recollection of what just happened, and will at that point normally settle back to sleep.

If your child is suffering from multiple night terrors or a night terror every night, I can recommend a solution. Our GP told us to try this and said it was the only thing she had found to work with night terrors. Basically, you wake your child up about 30 minutes before the time they normally wake up with a night terror. Give him/her a drink of milk and settle them back to sleep. This simple technique breaks the sleep cycle and is enough to stop the child entering the phase of sleep where the night terror usually occurs. This worked amazingly with Archie, and we found that he was so sleepy when we tried to wake him that we didn't need the milk to get him back to sleep, he simply fell straight back to sleep again. In fact we often couldn't wake him up but just rousing him was enough to stop the night terrors. After a few nights of doing this, Archie's night terrors stopped. I'd highly recommend this method and hope it works for you too.