"Good Morning"

Life with an autistic child is often about routine and consistency.  As a parent I do a lot of priming when we do anything that is out of the ordinary.  It basically consists of explaining what is going to happen, and hopefully Holden understands, and doesn’t get the wrong idea in his head about what is about to transpire.  Priming is a great tool, and works really well a lot of the time.  I even prime him when I put him to bed at night, by telling him it’s time for bed, then asking him a question he knows very well. “If you wake up before the sun comes up, what are you supposed to do?” to which he responds “go back to sleep.”  I wish I could tell you that this bit of priming always works, but unfortunately it does not!

On any given day Holden wakes up between 3:30am and 6:30am, it doesn’t matter what time he goes to bed.  If he wakes up in this range, he is basically up for the day.  Sometimes, maybe 20% of the time, I can get him back to sleep if he wakes up at 3:30ish, but it will take two hours for him to go back to sleep.  If he wakes up before 3:30am, like 2am, I have about a 75% chance of getting him back to sleep, and it will usually take around 30 minutes to an hour.  The fun doesn’t end here though, because no matter what time Holden does wake up, within about 5 minutes he is fully awake, and ready to make lots of noise.  As you can probably imagine, I can’t let him make as much noise as he would like, he would not only wake up the household, he would wake up the whole neighborhood.  So what do you do with a nine year old autistic kid full of energy, and making lots of noise?  That is a damn fine question…

Let me first set the stage for you.  Holden and I sleep in the same room.  We have separate beds, but as he is a flight risk, I really don’t feel safe with him in his own room.  Most of the time when he wakes up, and I am not in the room, his first instinct is to track me down. Let’s face it, Holden’s attention is very easily diverted though, so he may set out to find me, but end up taking a 3:30am stroll down the street, or play with the toaster oven, or the microwave, or anything else that he tries to get himself in trouble with.  I am a pretty light sleeper, but I am often running on very little sleep, so I don’t want to risk not waking up.  So we share a room (currently we also share the room with a dog, this will become amusing later).  When Holden wakes up, there is about a five minute window where he tosses and turns as he is coming out of his sleep.  He is often still breathing fairly deeply at this point.  I usually wake up, immediately check the time, and decide what I am going to do next.  Assuming I am not going to try and get him back to sleep, the following occurs.  As if they have been planning this for hours, at the exact same time, Holden gets out of his bed, and comes into my bed, while crossing the dog, who gets out of my bed, and goes to Holden’s now empty bed.  I can only assume the dog also wakes up when Holden starts stirring, and waits for that inevitable moment that Holden with transfer over to my bed, to transfer to his.  I don’t even have a clear idea when or why this ritual began, but I can tell you that Holden is already pretty hyper by this time, and will proceed to launch himself on top of me, and roll around on me, while giggling and attempting to bite me.  Here is what is so odd about the dogs behavior.  If I were lying on the couch, and Holden decided to jump on me and do the same antics, the dog would get jealous, start barking at us, and try to climb on the couch with us, while nuzzling and nipping at us.  Yet he seems to understand that in the morning, I am trying to get Holden to remain quiet and calm, and he leaves me to that task, while continuing his morning sleep.  

After they play musical beds, I spend the next few hours trying to keep Holden quiet and calm.  The magic time I am shooting for is when the sun is up, and it’s light out.  Then Holden can have some iPad time before breakfast and shower time.  I don’t want to give him the iPad when it is still dark out, because I know he will just start waking up earlier and earlier to gain access to it.  He knows he won’t get the iPad until “My sun comes up.” Apparently Holden own’s the sun, cause he always say “When my sun comes up.”  You can even ask him, when do you get the iPad in the morning? “When my sun comes up.”  Of course he still asks for the iPad every 30 seconds, and asks if his sun is up in equal amounts, but it won’t lead to a meltdown (by the way meltdowns are very, very loud), because he has been well primed that he won’t get it until “his” sun is up.  

Those early morning hours, between dark, and sun up, are some of the most difficult hours with Holden.  He gets very silly, laughing and giggling.  He tries to bite me non-stop.  This is not his usual meltdown, “I want to hurt you bites” it is his, “I really need sensory stimulus right now!” bites.  Unfortunately for me, they hurt almost as much.  So I try to keep him quiet, I try to keep his teeth off of me, and I try to keep him from leaving the bedroom.  I have the capacity to lock us in the room, which I use when I am taking a shower, but this will only keep Holden in the room. It certainly doesn’t keep him quiet, he will start knocking on the door, which will escalate to banging on the door.  So this goes on until “his” sun is up, then a whole new set of issues can surface.  

At this point I give him the iPad, and I get in the shower while he is distracted and happy.  He won’t stay distracted and happy for long.  As I have stated before, the iPad can not sustain him for very long.  Eventually he will either have something upset him, like a video that is no longer on You Tube, or won’t load for whatever reason, or he will decide that he wants to go make a video in the living room or the backyard, either way, his contentedness will come to an end.  Hopefully I am out of the shower by that point. I try to keep him reasonably quiet until around 8am on the weekend or summer.  I try to never let him be overly loud, because consistency is important.  Letting him be loud in the afternoon, will lead to him thinking it’s okay to be loud at 3:30 in the morning.  

So if we are ever talking, and I yawn in the middle of our conversation, please don’t take it personally, I have probably been up since 3:30am, after going to bed at midnight, because my only free time is from the time he goes to sleep, until the time he wakes up.  Like as I write this.