Sleep Routines in Autism (How to Tire Out an Autistic Child)
Every day I had a student who would sleep through most of the school day. When we tried to wake him up, things turned violent quickly. After a while, my team just accepted the fact that he was not going to be awake at school. Around his annual IEP meeting, I had a deep and intensive talk with his mother. Turns out she was at her wit’s end dealing with her autistic son, who was up all in the middle of the night rummaging through the house and getting into things. She was about to lose her job, felt like she couldn’t date, and was just miserable. So we set out together to attack their sleep routines and figure out how to tire out an autistic child who had somehow turned nocturnal.