hmm

[ljgeoff]

Kyle is back in school and keeping up but, a month into it, he's having more and more problems with his sleep schedule. I think the kid has some kind of circadian sleep disorder - more that the average teenage thing. When he was being home schooled, his normal sleep cycle was 4am-noon, and he was pretty regular with that. In late August, he started to make himself go to bed earlier and get up earlier and it looked like it was going to work, but now he's having trouble falling to sleep. Carl and Sam can fall asleep by 11p or 12a, but Kyle is staring at the ceiling until 3am or so. They have to be in school by 7:40am.

He ends up walking through the school day like a zombie, and his work is beginning to suffer. It's increasing his stress, and I think that the his irritable bowl might be flaring up.

The whole situation just makes me want to punch a wall. The kid is trying so hard to be just a normal guy.

I don't know if it would be better to try to move his circadian "clock" or just work with it. All the stuff I've read about it says that it should be treated (if one wants to live a 'normal' life), but my gut tells me that trying to screw with it is going to take over his life.

There is an Alternative High School in Marquette, but he doesn't want to go - most of the kids who attend are there because of behavior/social issues, and Kyle's comment was "I don't feel like having the goths, the stoners and the neo-nazi's take turns at me."

I was looking at an online high school, and that made me think that perhaps I could work with the local Alternative school to develop a program. The problem with the home schooling was accountability; working full time and going to school full time doesn't leave me enough time or energy to hound Kyle about doing his work - we were sporadic, at best.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Comments

[limnrix.livejournal.com]

Form a sleeping pill habit?

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

God, I hope not.

[limnrix.livejournal.com]

Honestly, the occasional non-habit-forming sleeping really helps me resist my nocturnalist tendencies. And it's what my own mother recommended.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Does he have good info on the Alternative School? (Like from kids who have gone there?) Here, the alternative program is very small and very flexible - mostly individual work with a teacher-coach checking off what you get done - and mostly kids who have already been out of school for a while and have some desire to get the diploma.

I can't remember how old he is. Here, if you're over 18 you can go to Adult High School and finish that way.

Can he get a credit or two doing some on-line or correspondence program in his own time-zone?

Key questions:
- What does he want? Does he see some benefit to finishing high school? What else does he want to do? Maybe he should be working instead at this point.

- I know that "average" teenagers have circadian cycles later than adults, and then presumably shift back later. I also know there are disorders like "delayed sleep phase" but I have no idea if they manifest differently in teenagers. Is there any credible opinion about whether letting him self-regulate now would make his physiology better or worse as an adult?

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

He's 14 1/2 - a high school freshman

He knows one friend of Sam's who goes to the Alternate school, and he doesn't like him much.

He does see benefit from finishing high school, he just doesn't have much belief that he'll make it through it.

I think that we could set up a program for him through online courses. The Alternative school *is* very flexable.

epi_lj has said in email that it's better to try to get a handle on this sooner rather than later, and that I really might want to get a physician involved. He gave some great suggestions on that front.

Whether the school system will be flexable at all while Kyle gets a handle on this is the question. They are very unhappy about having to deal with a "problem" kid.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but having some evidence that it's a *medical* problem rather than a disciplinary or attitude problem has got to help.

[boxofdelights]

I've had good results with melatonin for delayed sleep phase syndrome. It won't put you to sleep if you're resisting it, though. I imagine Kyle has massive amounts of anxiety around school, and anxiety makes it really hard to surrender to sleep.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

Yeah - I'm thinking about something like hypnosis therapy for the anxiety. That might help with relaxing for sleep, too. Don't know how effective it'll be if he thinks it's a crock, though.

I've heard that melatonin works. And there's a light therapy, too.

I'm feeling rather overwhelmed by all this, too. It's very hard to not just say to myself, 'well, he'll be alright'. Bleh.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

By the way, that icon is hot.

[turbo-swami.livejournal.com]

I use meditation techniques and self-hypnosis to fall asleep. I learned self-hypnosis from a counselor who I had to see. When I went to high school I use to tutor students. I found that most students who struggled, struggled because they weren't good readers. Maybe Kyle's mind wanders when he reads and he isn't fully aware of that. Some textbooks are very technical, making them difficult to read.