Aspies For Freedom

so was I !!!

from about 2 yrs to 7 I was EXTREMELY hyperactive my mum said that once she  gave me a sleeping medicine ans it had no effect at all so the doctor or gp suggested using a stronger dose it didn't make me sleep but I ended up looking like i was drunk!!!

When I'm sleepy I'm less aware of what's going on in the world outside my head (and probably anyone is). So, I think that trouble sleeping can be linked to more problems with learning social interaction.
When I started new school this year, I forced myself not to sleep all night before the first day at there. Can't really say if this worked - because I got depersonalized

Well... I'm not sure if I believe this research much. The number of test subjects is small, like someone else pointed out, and also, aren't those sleeping exams done in a lab prepared with all the machines to test the child, along with professionals to watch over them? I do see why the aspies would all have problem sleeping, I usually don't sleep at all when I'm in a strange room, or with strange people around. Actually, being hooked up in lots of beeping, scratching or humming machines would drive me crazy. Maybe not the case with everyone here, but there are a lot of us with sensorial problems and problems with routine, and in a sample of eight, it would be extremely easily to pick up only those kids. I don't understand much of the comparison with sleep they did with autism, but they didn't tell anyplace if auties didn't have sleeping problems too.


I can sleep only with absolute no light too. Even a clock's light annoys me some nights. And no sound, too. After I started university, I moved to a apartment where there is no door between my room and the kitchen, and the refrigerator sound drives me nuts more often than not. I can sleep with music I like though, so I sleep with a mp3 playing every night. Actually, I don't think I would be able to sleep at all if I wasn't hearing music I like. But any other music/noise bothers me.

I've never woken up refreshed, either. If I need to go someplace really early, I will usually stay up all night and go without sleeping. It's kind of usual for me to pull allnighters, to study, because I feel better without sleeping than in the six hours after I wake up. But unfortunately, after 40 hours or so awake, I lose completely my balance and my head is too slow and fuzzy for anything, so I fall asleep. I've felt so since I was little, it didn't really develop into anything really, I used to drive my parents crazy because I didn't want to go to sleep.

I've tried using a regular sleeping schedule too, but makes no difference. The only time I woke up with a resemblance of being refreshed, I had slept about 25 hours through, and it was nothing more than a resemblance.

When i was young i always stayed on late and was the last to go to bed. I found when i got more sleep i would feel more tired in the morning for school. But if there was a program i wanted to watch on early in the morning i would always be able to wake myself up 5mins before it started without an alarm clock and i would feel wide awake. This wasn't much use unless it was the weekend because then there would be cartoons in the morning  but when my parents got a free trial of sky when i was 10 and there would be cartoons from 6am-9am during the week which i would get up for every morning and watch them all even though my school started at 9am.

When I was younger I would also be very scared at night. I went through a phase when I couldn’t sleep unless the light was off, then if there was light. Then both at the same time which made everything difficult. I used to go downstairs and watch whatever my family was watching but that only increased my fear at night because it would usually be scary and give me more things to worry about( no matter how unrealistic it would be i would think it would happen to me). Until recently I have been terrified of the dark because of what could be hiding, also every scary thing I have ever watched flashes in my mind at night when I try and walk about in the dark. eg dead bodies covered in blood in the corner, ghosts in the mirror that escape and try to kill you when you look at them. Luckily that has finally stopped and I make sure I don’t watch anything scary anymore.

When i started secondary school (age 11) was when i first aware that i couldn't sleep at night, i had a watch my then and i knew that a child has to get 9hrs of sleep a night. so i would obsessively check my watch when going to sleep and when i woke up so i would know how much sleep i got. when at night i had less than 9hrs until i had to be awake the next morning i would get very panicked that i wouldn't be able to work at school the next day and so was too upset to sleep. But at a weekend i would be fine to fall asleep because i knew i could sleep until i got at least 9hrs.
When i was 12 i became very interested in sleeping, i had a dream journal, books on dream meaning and i wanted to know how a person actually falls asleep. so i would keep myself awake by analysing what happened to me when i was falling asleep and so it took me ages to sleep. To make it even worse in the morning i would go through my thoughts and would try and remember the very last thing i though about before a slept and what time it was. Which would make me more aware of myself falling asleep the next time which makes it impossible to sleep.

I got over this by not letting myself analyse myself when sleeping, i now instead force myself to dream by thinking of a situation. Its usually a social situation that I didn’t go perfectly and so I analyse that instead, I think about what I said, the words that would work better and the persons response to what I said and what their response would be to what I think I should of said. Or I think about an ideal situation and how I would handle that. I then eventually fall asleep and have real dreams. Although what I think about sometimes keeps me up later than I should be up I reason that during sleep your brain is just organising itself and doing it consciously doesn’t mean I’m getting rest. Also now I no longer wear a watch and do not have to worry about the time although I make sure I get 8hrs now I am 16 but if I don’t its no big deal because I will drink a red bull in the morning to keep me going and I can catch up on sleep during the weekend. I view sleep time as a debt system now and calculate how much time I have missed during the week and stay in bed for however long i need to catch up. Even if I wake up before that (I have an annoying habit of always waking up at 7) I just think how I would when wanting to sleep.

I now do not panic that i am not getting enough sleep because i know i will be fine and i can function without it. i have been getting less recently since i had a new friend who i would stay up late with talking to him (he can't sleep) but that level of friendship is over now so i go to sleep early because i run out of things to do (i do my best to resist the internet at night because i lose track of time, it is currently 10.30 when i planned to sleep an hour ago)

I've got some trouble sleeping too, I just don't fall asleep for at least an hour when I'm in my bed, and I can't sleep when there's a little light, like when the light at the other side of my bedroomdoor are still on. I also have this annoying thing that I always wake up at seven o'clock, even when I don't have to...

I've also always felt the need to sleep with some sort of light on. It just doesn't feel right without that light. My parents don't like that though...

About having trouble to sleep: how much time should it take you to fall asleep anyway? I think I'm awake every night for about an hour, maybe 1.5. It doesn't trouble me very much. I am tired, but my NT friends are too.

Do any of you have trouble sleeping away from home? I have a horrible time at sleepovers and I hate going away for a few days with my class.

Sleep is my biggest problem. My body has always wanted to sleep during the daytime and then I'm very alert and creative at night. That doesn't work for my life though. I love mornings and I'd like to be awake for them instead of sleeping from 4:00AM to 2:00PM or even later... I woke up around 3:00PM today and I'm still trying to wake up enough to get down to business here in my office... and it's 9:10PM. This sleepiness is debilitating.

As long as I can remember I have had trouble going to sleep &  waking up at a reasonable time, I just thought I was an owl by nature.

Once asleep, I usually sleep like the dead unless someone is creeping about..trying not to disturb me, this wakes me quicker than anything & I'm instantly alert.

I cannot sleep with the curtains shut or the door closed.

Recently, my sleep pattern has become worse due to medication which should aid sleep but which makes me rather high, at present I'm going to bed around 4-6am.

My youngest son has always had difficulties getting to sleep, he didn't sleep much as a baby & being in a car made him more alert (even when traveling overnight) but this has never appeared to affect him adversely the next day, he cannot sleep without a light on.

My older son is another who goes to bed at daft in the morning & he also has difficulties waking.

Last night everyone was fully awake at 4am!

This is a great idea. I think there are actually programs you can download (Yahoo Widgets and things like that) that will shut down the computer for you at a specified time. That's something else to look into.

I've always had alot of problems with dysomnia(s) and sleep schedule.  First post btw, a friend told me about this site.

Now that sounds like me. Any tiny noise and I"m up and I stay up unfortunately.

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My son has problems getting to sleep, it sounds awful but I've kinda given up now I'm too exhausted, I just leave him to it, when I go to bed I can hear him chattering away to himself or reading his beloved Mr Men books, he drops off eventually.  

I'd also like some advice that applies to real parents as well as real kids, when you have AS and/or various "disorders" yourself, raising a child can be challenging to say the least so being consistant and following routines is often very difficult, well it is for me anyway.
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Oh, so familiar - right down to the Mr Men books!   When my son was younger the only thing really that stopped us thinking he was hyperactive was the fact that he would sleep through the night.  For the last year or so, since he started school possibly now I think of it, he has been awake and alert till about 11 -11.30pm.  He sleeps with light on, and has a CD player in his room.  He goes to bed, with usual routine, and then reads, writes, plays with toys, talks and sings until he gets back into bed and goes to sleep.  He regularly comes downstairs to talk to me, show me things, check what I'm looking at on-line ta de da.  Now, I just encourage him to stay in his room.  I've always been a night owl and he's looking to be the same.  Can't make him go to sleep.

Recently though, he's been getting upset and sometimes tearful about the fact that he's lying in bed and can't sleep.  I tell him just to do something in his room until he feels sleepy and get into bed then.

He's mostly bright and breezy in the morning, but sometimes sleepy and reluctant to get up.

Same thing with me, once my son wakes me up I'm up for the day. I cant go back to sleep .

It takes me a little longer to fall asleep then most, but that is probably has do with my OCD (obsessive thoughts), not my AS. I like to go to sleep while listening to the BBC World Service (which is on my public radio station at night) to distract my mind and thus keep the OCD from keeping me up. Once I do fall asleep, however, I sleep like a rock.

I had sleep issues when I was in high school because of the typical wacked out teenage body clock not fitting with the 6:30AM time I had to get up for school. In the last couple years, though, my body clock seems to have broken out of that teenage pattern and settled into a midnight to 8AM pattern.

My son is not happy when I have to wake him up for school after he was up all night

Oh yeah ... our son (4) is put to bed at 8 pm, he insists he has to go to the loo about 15-30 times before he starts to sleep at 11 pm. And of course he needs a light. He is very ungrateful when we wake him up as early as 8 am!
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