DISCUSSION FORUM

Hi Autism Hangout,
Have come here via youtube, thank you so much for putting this out there and to Tony Attwood in taking the time to do this.

so here's my question ;

My 13 year old son has Asperger's, he is a capable young man, who has progressed from having violent meltdowns, to actually being able to communicate his emotions. ( we still have to help him with others emotions .. but hey ). We have worked hard on communication skills, sensory issues, social skills and some change in routines over the years.

He is in a good supportive school who understand him. he was relieved at recieving his diagnosis.. so things are going brilliantly there.


However .. my son doesn't sleep much ( 3-4 hours a night ), and the sleep that he does get is disturbed by what his doctors have called parasomnias. They have Diagnosed him with 'sleep Disorder'. We have tried Melatonin, having his sleep hygene totally 'by the book', looked at his diet, he has kept a journal to try and dump his thought's in there.. excersise, quiet down time... the list goes on and on... but none of this is improving his sleep.
His EEGs have all come back clear from epilepsy.
We have tried just about everything we can, barring prescription sleeping medication.


he wakes tired in the mornings from all the shouting and fighting and wandering about ( when he sleeps), finds it hard to go sleep and wake in the morning. This effects his day time resiliance for stress the next day, and leads to meltdowns.
The more stress he suffers through the day the worse the nights are. It's a negative spiral.
This has now gone on for as long as I can remember.

Doctor Tony is there any hope that my son will actually get a full nights restful sleep?
( or infact the family, whom he wakes up).
And, if it is stress related, what can we do to help put extra strategies in place to reduce his stress levels at everyday occurances, as sometimes you can't help if there is a subsitute teacher at school, or it's raining that day, or many things that 'just' happen in daily life?


“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
― Albert Einstein