Hi everyone,
I hope you are doing well and enjoying the beautiful spring weather ☀️🌸. This is one of my favourite seasons: nature’s waking up… It’s so magical!
It’s been a few weeks since we implemented a “strategy,” but it took me a little while to tell you about it: I wanted to see if it worked, even in the “medium” term! 😜
You need a little backtracking for a better understanding!
I’m going to tell you about it in the manner of a tale for more sweetness, and who knows, this article might help you too to fall asleep 😅 (well, I hope it won’t be too soporific, 😴🥱😜).
Once upon a time, there was a young teenager with autism who couldn’t fall asleep at night, so she kept everyone else from sleeping or enjoying a quiet moment in front of a movie! This “merry-go-round” lasted for several weeks, and put us all on edge, completely knocked out 💥🔥! We were at the end of our rope without any “long” term solution… She sometimes took up to 3 hours to let it go and fall from exhaustion after screaming, crying, and banging on her bed… We might as well tell you that sometimes, she even prevented her brother from falling asleep (only a wall separates their rooms), who is, however, a heavy sleeper!
We talked, discussed, and repeated dozens, even hundreds of times the same things: “Put yourself in the dark and think of nice things, create little stories in your head; you don’t want to sleep, okay, but don’t prevent others from sleeping… 😩🤫😵💫”. We tried melatonin (here in Canada, it’s over the counter / the pill provides a supplement of this hormone secreted by the brain to signal the body to sleep), music, reading a book…
We were at the end of our rope, whether it was her or us, and in a state of maximum tension 💥🔥. I’ll let you imagine the mood at home!”🫣🤪.
And then came, like the light at the end of the tunnel, the appointment with our therapist🤓.
I explained to her the difficult period we were going through, that we had no solution, and that nothing was working… In short, a real catastrophe!
And she told me to try podcasts and audiobooks to trick her brain from working too much by focusing on what it hears + physical activity at the end of the day to release tension and too much energy (to tire her out).
It was a miracle 🤩: the first podcast after walking our husky 🐕with my husband at the end of the day resulted in a first calm evening from weeks!”🎉🎉
We were really happy and calmed down but apprehensive: will this last?
We had to switch to audiobooks (AUDIBLE app) that allow her to follow a longer story in the books she likes, which holds 🥳🥳🥳. Okay, there are occasional nights when it’s still complex if she’s under considerable stress (like the school trip to Montreal the other day). But it is a MIRACLE!!!
Thanks to our therapist who knew how to find the right thing 🥰🥰. She knows very well how our princess works and, as a result, was able to find the solution that corresponds to her: our princess thinks a lot, is always looking for answers, and has a lot of questions… Her brain is constantly spinning, and it’s even worse with this challenging adolescence period!
To sum up, what helped our daughter to fall asleep better and have better nights (us too, by the way, 😜) is walking her dog🐕 at night and listening to an audiobook 🎙️ without a time limit before sleeping! Her evening ritual has changed, but it fits her better: she settles down in her bedroom after eating, then brushes her teeth and cuddles “good night,” then she starts listening to her audiobook in bed and turns it off when she wants (usually after an hour of reading so no later than 11 pm).
Everyone lives again: she sleeps better in the end, her brother can fall asleep quietly (for him, we have another technique… I’ll have to write an article about it because it’s magic too!) and we spend calm, relaxing evenings… 🥰🥰🥰🥰.
And do you have any tips or tricks that help your kids sleep and fall asleep more easily? Don’t hesitate to share them in the comments: it could help other parents! 😁
1…2…3… Let’s share!!!!😁😁😁😁
