January 1, 2017
Author
Sean
I recently came across the following quote “If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” ― Maya Angelou This is my new goal in life. Not to conform to be normal, but to be amazing and I hope to inspire you to be amazing too.

Bouncing Bedtimes

Straight into the posts, I've not long finished my hello world post that I'm into an everyday type post.

That said, I don't plan to post every day, but when there is a subject I want to chat about then I will.

Bouncing bedtimes

That's the title of this blog. What I mean about this is that, even though my son has been in his bedroom for an hour now; instead of sleeping; he's jumping on his bed.

Getting Little Mr. (that's my son by the way) to sleep is; most days; a full-time job in itself. Even more so when I have some time off work such as this, mainly as our times shift a little.

Most evenings it takes a good hour, sometimes more, before he will settle in his bed. This routine generally goes like this.

  • We put him to bed
  • He gets out of bed and either bounce climbs on something or bangs the wall
  • We go back into the room and put him to bed, we make no actual interaction to avoid him repeatedly doing it for attention.
  • Repeat the last 2 steps X amounts of time; with the odd 'Bedtime'. Just the single word. We're trying to not confuse, we just repeat the word we use (which is associated with the PEC Card) used for bed.

Doing it for the reaction

We know he does it for the reaction, to be honest. How, well because he will bounce on his bed, then when we go in he will smirk and sit down. He knows that he will get us into his room.

That said, if we are quick enough to put him back to bed before he jumps too long, he starts to get bored and eventually go to sleep.

This is one of the many difficulties we find. It's difficult enough to get our older child who doesn't have Autism to stay in bed. So explaining it to a child who does I find can be challenging.

Parent time

I would think that many parents, even parents without special needs children will have similar stories of bedtimes. It's not specific to children with ASD, although it can impact parent alone evening times. My evening will probably go on for another 30-45 minutes, so on average 1-2 hours before he finally gives in.

That said, kids back at school next week so we can get back into that routine. Means earlier mornings and hopefully tired out kids.

Do you have routines

As a parent, do you find you have a routine for bed? Ours is simply to repeat putting him back into bed with limited interaction. This does work for us as it means he doesn't get the reaction he seeks.

What about you, do you have a similar routine or something completely different?

On that note, it's time to put him back in his bed now.

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Author
Sean
I recently came across the following quote “If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” ― Maya Angelou This is my new goal in life. Not to conform to be normal, but to be amazing and I hope to inspire you to be amazing too.

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