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[quote=Anonymous]My 10 year old ASD son went through this for a really long time and the lack of sleep only exacerbated his OCD-like perseveration.   He has been in skills therapy and has had cbt for quite awhile now, but like many other people on the spectrum, his body doesn't shut down at night and he struggled with both sleep onset delay as well as intermittent waking.  We consulted a psychiatrist, who prescribed Vistaril to help him sleep and it does wonders.  One of the difficulties of using meds on ASD children (and I have two) is that it often does not work as expected.  The pp is correct in that psychiatrists are reluctant to prescribe Xanax or any other type of benzodiazepine because they are highly addictive and often cause a paradoxical effect in children (my son was first prescribed klonopin for extreme insomnia and all it did was make him agitated).   Vistaril, however, is basically a very heavy antihistamine (hospitals use it to relax patients before surgery).  It's non-addictive and the only side effects have been sedation, which is why we only give it at night.  No one likes to medicate their kid (and I went for years resisting medicating either of my kids for their severe anxiety), but sleep is crucial and if your child has been awake that long then it's all about picking the lesser of the two evils.  Good luck and I hope it works out.  [/quote]

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