So vacation got off on the wrong foot this morning, with both children waking up before 4 AM.

Now, this wasn’t entirely the Monster’s fault – the baby woke up around 3ish and was hollering in his room, which served to wake up his big brother.  That’s not to say that the walls are quite thin… but probably that we were remiss in not making sure the monitor was on and that we got the baby soon enough to keep him from waking others.

The baby, of course, has a (probable) excuse – we suspect he’s teething, and that’s usually been something that has him up at early hours.  The Monster, not so much.

I know from reading other blogs that there are a lot of parents of children with Autism that have issues with sleep – either getting the child to bed, or keeping him/her there once they’ve gone.  And, like most four-almost-five year olds, the Monster doesn’t particularly want to go to bed most nights, but would rather stay up and play.  On the other hand, unlike a lot of kids I know that are his age, he goes compliantly most of the time when its made clear that this isn’t a negotiation.

So when both of them are up at the early hour, it’s the question of what to do about it.  The baby had to be attended to, obviously.

I’ll admit that in the past, I’ve been inclined to go check on the Monster as well, to see what’s wrong if he’s making noise.  I’ve come to the conclusion more recently, though, that most children can and will put themselves back to sleep, and so this morning, I left him be while I attended to the baby, and then… sure enough, he went back to sleep on his own.  And he is, usually, very good about staying in bed when he gets up early, which surprises me, given how I was as a child.  (Whether this is due to the Autism or not, I’m honestly not sure… but he is very good about staying in bed and not being a crazy person in his bedroom.)

Now, admittedly, he was also awake by the time I left for work (which is to say he slept in for around an hour and a half), but that’s not a bad trade-off on vacation time.