Weighted Blanket

Anthony sleeps under a weighted blanket and I thought I'd write about it, just in case anyone was every looking for advice on it. I've had several friends ask me about it and it's hard to know what to buy when you are first looking.

We bought Anthony's blanket at Cozy Calm. It's super nice and it weighs 12 pounds and fits his twin bed. I think it cost around $50 and the shipping was free. Since he uses it every night of his life, it seems like a good deal to me. We used to have a five pound one, it was for a toddler bed or crib. You can get all sorts of colors and prints. I brought his little one into school, so he could hold it on his lap if he wanted.

He has to have a weighted blanket to sleep because he has Sensory Processing Disorder. I really think that his sensory issues are so profound that he would have them even without having Autism. He requires a LOT of sensory input to just be at an even keel. Actually, I don't know if this is true for Anthony ALL the time now, but it used to be. I imagine as he grows up and develops, his sensory needs will change, but we're not sure. He does like his blanket and he really sleeps better since he's gotten it.

He has been going nuts lately at night, opening one drawer in his dresser and throwing everything out of it. Sometimes it looks like a BOMB hit his room in the morning and there is NOTHING in there. Because we've had Veronica in our walk in closet, Mike had a lot of his clothes in Anthony's closet. There are no doors, because as long time readers of this blog might remember, Anthony tore them off years ago. So he'll run along at night, snapping the long-sleeved shirts off the hangers. BOY he is a pain, right? Who does that? Now the girls are in their room together, though, so I should just put Mike's clothes back in the closet and be done with it.

His sensory issues are why he is grinding his teeth, too. He grinds them if he's sad or tense, and he grinds them when he's happy, too. It's awful - it makes me feel just terrible that he does it and there's nothing we can do to stop him. I'm hoping that like a lot of things, it will just fade away. I hope he still has teeth by then!