Sleep – oh precious sleep…….

Someone recently asked my husband, who is going to retire soon, what he was going to do when he retired.  My husband’s response?  “Sleep.”  

Sleep is a precious commodity. And in my family, all of us need a good night’s rest. We are all sleep driven. If we don’t get enough sleep, we all become cranky monsters. I should have known when I married my husband that our children would be just like us.

Even the other day, when I was talking to Ryan, he said he had been kept up half the night by a party that was raging in his apartment building two days earlier and he was still cranky from not getting enough sleep.

We all know about all the studies on sleep and how much sleep we need every night to optimally operate. But that’s not what this blog is about. It’s about Ryan’s sleeping habits and his need for consistent bedtime and quality sleep.

As you can imagine, when Ryan was young, he either had an on switch or an off switch. He would go, go, go and then crash. (See the picture below? He literally bent over the couch and fell asleep. We have lots of those pictures.) That crash was sometimes very painful as we could see it coming, flaming crankiness, flaming temper tantrums and then OUT! If we happened to not be home and his routine was upset and we wouldn’t be able to keep his bedtime, then we would be in a world of hurt the next day. His ADHD symptoms would increase, he wouldn’t be able to manage himself well, and anyone around us would be privy to his behavioral shenanigans. Even today, when he seems extra cranky or out of sorts, I will ask him if he had a good night’s sleep the night before. Almost always the answer is no.

As he reached later elementary school and middle school, Ryan’s sleep patterns changed. He started to have trouble falling asleep due to his brain being so active. Some of this was because his meds would have worn off by this time. Once he did fall asleep he was an “active” sleeper. Meaning he moved a lot in the bed and he began talking in his sleep. We could hear him talking away, sometimes clearly, sometimes mumbling and we’d check on him. He was always asleep. If we were away on a trip in a hotel room, many times we were entertained by the things he said, and had to keep our laughing out loud to a minimum so we wouldn’t wake him. Those are memorable and funny memories. Many times the next morning, after a very busy night of talking in his sleep, he would say that he didn’t sleep well. Even if he’d been “asleep” for over eight hours. He’d talk about having a lot of dreams.

In high school, managing sleep for any teenager is a struggle. Late nights, early mornings during the week, and late nights and sleeping late on weekends are the norm. For Ryan, this was not the norm. He had learned by this time that sleep was just about the single most important thing he could do for himself to keep him on an even keel. Because he had to leave the house every morning by seven to get to school, he needed to be in bed and asleep by ten. We never had to fight him on this. I think this was partially due to us setting up a bedtime routine for Ryan at an early age, He did have trouble shutting off his brain and falling asleep, which was when he started to take Melatonin to help. For him, it worked very well. On weekends, he also had a schedule, which meant that he went to bed an hour later, but he still got up in the morning by eight. His sleeping issues only became a bit of a problem when he would go away on his Boy Scout trips and he didn’t get enough sleep and would come home tired. But even then, I understood that Ryan would go into his tent earlier than most scouts. But he would always come home happy with his experiences, but cranky with lack of sleep. And then he was off to bed on those Sundays earlier than expected.

We have always known to give Ryan grace when he hasn’t had enough sleep. We weren’t always good about putting that into practice, but we have tried diligently to not expect too much from him and not have meaningful conversations with him. He just couldn’t and still can’t do it.

It’s hard to manage sleep in your child who has ADHD. Their brain is just not wired like everyone else’s. It’s hard to turn off all the stuff that is going around and around in the brain. But having a bedtime routine, keeping off devices at least thirty minutes before bedtime, reading a book, taking some deep breaths, and taking a natural sleeping aid, and making sure that the child is getting enough hours of sleep for their age can all help. The most important thing? A set bedtime routine and schedule. That’s vital. The ADHD child’s behavior and ADHD symptoms will be so much more manageable. The last thing you want is an uncontrollable yet lovable monster running around in your life.

“I  turned in and slept like a log–I don’t mean a brisk, fresh, green log, but an old dead, soggy rotten one, that never turns over or gives a yelp.”

  Letter to Olivia Clemens, December 16, 1871 –  Mark Twain

Ryan asleep leaning over the couch.