It’s happened. I have reached “Autism saturation”. Now, this should not be misinterpreted as a sense that I have attained wisdom, truth, or understanding. All of which would be admirable no matter how unlikely. I think what I am feeling is the result of being immersed for too long in too many different aspects of autism. Obviously, one cannot retreat for any length of time from life, and this is absolutely not something I want. K is doing so well lately that it is a real treat to see him (and the rest of the family of course) and see and hear what has happened that day. This is the one area of autism immersion that I enjoy and will not be seeking a brief respite from.

However, there are numerous other areas of autism that I spend a fairly significant amount of time pursuing such as reading autism related news, blogs, and research on almost a daily basis. Not to mention the endless discussions about K, his progress, his team, upcoming events, appointments, and various meetings. These activities provide me with an additional sense of contribution to K’s progress, that I am contributing to the larger ASD community, and provides some additional content for our family’s website as well as this blog. But it is not hard to imagine that it can become very time consuming and borderline compulsive if not kept in check, especially given the amount of information that is available.

Recently Tracy and I joined a local advocacy group that is just getting underway. The group is still getting established and finding its voice and it is exciting to be involved in this venture. I volunteered some of my meager technical knowledge and am trying to help establish a web page as well as provide some online collaboration tools to help assist everyone in working together as all involved have busy, hectic lives. As this project too is very ASD-centric it is adding to the “saturation” and has necessitated a brief hiatus from some of my other activities that relate to ASD, including the blog.

To make matters somewhat worse K has not been sleeping well for the last couple of months. This usually involves getting him back to bed after he has come to “visit” us in the middle of the night and waiting for him to fall back to sleep before heading back to bed myself. K usually makes out alright and only has a minor disturbance in his sleep, except for those rare (touch wood) occasions when he is awake for 2 hours, but it leaves me with a fairly disrupted sleep schedule that is beginning to take its toll. I am fairly certain that this is definitely a contributing factor to the saturation effect and we are going to start being more active in re-regulating K’s sleeping pattern.

This is familiar territory for many ASD families and us as well. There was a period last year when K did not sleep well for almost 5 months; needless to say this is hard on everyone involved. It is now time for us to re-visit some of the strategies we used before to get him back on track and to get out of our own routine that has allowed this regression of his sleeping pattern. I think this is more about habituation, his and ours, than anything else and hopefully by being diligent and establishing a new, and more appropriate, pattern we can all get back to enjoying the now ever so elusive sleep. If there is a bright side to the lack of sleep it is the opportunity it has given K and I to bond and this has carried over beyond these times of wakefulness and into our everyday interactions. This has not been easy and started a long time ago and will likely be the subject of another post.

Now, it’s time to get the kids to bed and start back onto the road of full nights of sleep and pursuit of our often talked about but rarely achieved state of balance…. What a pleasant, and motivating, thought.

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