Author: Purva Kamat | December 20th, 2021
Parent Testimonial:
We have been struggling with sleep since our daughter was a couple of months old. We would need to walk her and rock her to sleep. It became easier when she started drinking from a bottle and would fall asleep with the bottle in her mouth. More recently the problem resurfaced when she was weaned off the bottle. Sometimes she would be awake till 1 am and would be as energetic like it was her evening playtime. This took a toll on the mental and physical health of our family. We were grumpy and tired all the time. I didn’t realise at first that this could be related to autism.
Many neurotypical kids have sleep trouble and I assumed it would get better with time but it didn’t. It got worse. We noticed that she was aggressive at bedtime. She never seemed to be calm. She would get up and bang her head against the headboard while asleep. She would bite and refuse to settle down. I saw a flier for a webinar about sleep issues conducted by Sethu and attended this got me thinking that this was probably because of her autism rather than simply weaning.
Purva our autism interventionist at Sethu gave us simple solutions and tips, ‘tools’ which started showing results in less than 10 days. After struggling for years, we were finally getting into a routine and it was working like a dream. 10 weeks into the programme, our 5 year old sleeps at 8:30 pm and wakes up at 7:30 am. She is chirpy, eats better, has great energy and is attentive in class. A big bonus is the whole family is sleeping better. It takes a lot of commitment to stick to the routine Purva suggested but the proof is in the lack of dark circles under all of our eyes! Much gratitude to Purva and team Sethu for always being there for us. We are truly in this together. Thank you Team Sethu for your guidance!