Why might people with Autism Spectrum Disorders be prone to more ‘off’ days than the rest of the population?
One issue is that they are often highly sensitive. This could mean that they are extra-sensitive to loud noise, to certain textures, to bright lights and various other things. Any one of these things may tick them off, resulting in off days.
With regards to a tennis lesson or a workday, something like ensuring sleep is optimised every single night may reduce the number of ‘off’ days. I have already mentioned a number of things that may help optimise sleep for Autistics:
- sleeping under a Ball Blanket (for example one made by Protac);
- filtering out blue light, which suppresses the body’s production of the sleep-inducing hormone Melatonin, in the evenings; things like Blue Light Blocking lamps and programs to reduce the colour temperature of computer screens work well for this.
In addition something like the following should help (quoting my own work):