Are You Ready For Beddy Time?

Of all the things that we do have trouble with at home, the least stressful of them is bedtime.

I remember, as a child, putting up plenty of fights about bedtime – wanting to stay up later to watch TV, or to read, or to just do anything besides go to sleep, which was boring. (Those were the days.)  And inevitably, I had ways to get around those problems, but in the end, my parents won.

Given how the Monster doesn’t always understand directions, I think I expected bedtime to be a bigger issue, especially since we’re not always so consistent due to our own schedules.  There are nights where one or the other of us isn’t available.  Nights where the grandparents are watching him.  Nights where, for whatever reason, we’re not home at bedtime and things get delayed.  And then the nights where we just decide on a whim to let him stay up later for a bit.

Ironically, this has been the easiest part of dealing with his autism.  One of two things happens when we’re home, without fail – either he announces to us that it is bedtime or heads for his room on his own (not quite so common), or he relents the moment we tell him it’s bedtime.

Of course, though, this also requires a fixed ritual.  There’s changing, two songs, and then into bed.

Bed, to me, might be the weirdest thing.  He’s slowly been accumulating more things into his bed.  Originally, it was just a stuffed animal, his pillow and a blanket.  When I last checked, it’s now the blanket, pillow, three or four stuffed animals and his night-light ladybug.  None of them are in the ‘expected’ locations – the pillow’s midway down the bed, one stuffed animal is at the head, everything’s scattered about – and he prefers to just disappear under his blankets rather than sleep like a normal person. AND, typically, he’ll stay there or in the rocking chair beside his bed until someone retrieves him in the morning.  (His door has a gate in front of it, but I can’t recall the last time he actually even opened the door before someone came to wake him up.)

On the other hand, I’ll take it over bedtime fights.

One thought on “Are You Ready For Beddy Time?

  1. Ive had a very similar experience with my almost 4 year old. He loves sleep, even when he was a baby. He also collects toys with him in bed. I can hear him up a few hours past when he was put to bed talking in the language that he made up. He isn’t into Stuffed animals so much. He prefers toy cars.

    My wife and I had a very interesting experience recently with him. We also have a 5 month old boy as well. Every night my son and I have a routine. I tell him “time for bed” or “time for bath” he will immediately put his hands behind his back and start yelling aaaaawwwwwww. This goes on for 5 minutes or so, then he is happy to go to sleep.

    My recent experience was a bit different. After going through our normal routine, I told him to kiss his little brother, which he listened and did. Then I told him to kill mommy good night. To which I received a “NO!”

    He then proceeded to bend down near his little brother and put his hand on the clasp that was holding his brother in a chair and said “ooooppppeeeeennn” so I bent down and unbuckled his brother. My older then proceeded to push the baby slowly until I picked the baby up. Not to hurt the baby at all, but just to show me that he wanted me to pick the baby up.

    So I picked the baby up. He then grabbed my other hand and pulled me and the baby up the stairs and attempted his usual ” goodnight mama” which sounds more like gnite a ma ma.

    Apparently he is the older brother and if he has to go to sleep, so does the baby. Sometimes it catches me off guard just how normal he can be.

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