I would give my ASD child my sleep shirt so she has Mommy scent for comfort. As far as the sleep training goes, my sleep routine for her includes a full body massage with lavender lotion and her naptime routine has pretty much been the same since she was born. She is generally asleep before i even finish the massage.

My 5-year-old ASD son has always had sleeping issues - nothing shocking about that! This are the things we've tried with the clinginess and sleeping. One, we had a very specific bedtime routine with him and that was helpful. Anytime someone came to visit or his routine was not right, things went downhill fast. Second, while I'm divorced now, my husband and I would team up on the bedtime routine. I would always do the nighttime routine, sometimes with my husband and sometimes without, but when I said good night, that was it. I didn't go back upstairs again. My husband would go upstairs to calm him down and soothe him, but I think it helped that he knew I wasn't going to give in and go back upstairs. We also had gates at the stairs for a long time so he couldn't come downstairs on his own anyway. He started asking to leave the gate open, and we did if he promised that he wouldn't come downstairs. After a couple of tries he saw we were serious and he stayed in his room with the gate open. I think he just felt better, more in control, knowing it was open. When we took the gates down, he still never came downstairs in the night. He would call us but never come down on his own. He remains shocked to this day that his little brother has the guts to defy mommy and go downstairs in the night.

Other things we did - stopped waiting and waiting for him to go to sleep. We put a CD player in his room that he could control, and he would listen to music if he couldn't sleep. We also had no toys except books and puzzles in his room, but it was OK with us if he woke up in the night for him to play with those things. No electronics! That continues to work for us years later.

Also, I don't know if this would help y'all, but before we even realized anything about sensory issues, we figured out Evan would stop screaming with a hug. So we taught him how to ask for a hug when he was getting upset, and stopped hugging him when he screamed. It worked and he asks for hugs all the time. We can also sense when he is about to go off and are often proactive in asking him, do you need a hug?

Everyone is different - these things worked for us. Good luck!

Our 4.5 year old daughter did a burst of a phase doing the same thing with her daddy, he couldn't walk into another room without her worried that he would disappear forever. We reinforced that he NEVER leaves without telling her and the fit she was throwing was unacceptable, we made sure she had the proper (for her) goodbyes when we would leave and our respite provider had positive rewards when she would comply with us leaving. When he leaves and she is with me, I just hold her and distract her... somehow, someway it just dissipated and we resumed our normal... however, he is about to leave for 2.5 months so I'm sure when he gets back she'll jump right back into it.

My four year old daughter is the same with her Mom. They and my 2 year old non-ASD son all the sleep on the same bed. My daughter now will sometimes sleep with me because there's less room as the kids grow, the kids fight each other at times and can't stand it when one of them won't sleep. They may grow out this stage I hope.