Problems at bedtime with 5 and 3 year old

[nikki1978]

DS (3) and DD (5) share a bedroom. They always have and it has not been a problem until a couple of months ago (about 2 weeks after DS stopped having a bottle of milk to go to sleep).

They used to be great and lie down quietly before dropping off within about half an hour.

Now they are a nightmare. It often takes them 90 mins to go to sleep and they spend that time playing and reading together. They don't come downstairs but DD will often come and stand at the top of the stairs and ask me if she can have a drink, something to eat etc.

It is driving us mad having to go up and shout at them every 10 mins to get into bed.

They get up at about 7.30am and bedtime is at 8 at the moment as it is so light in the evenings.

If they were a bit older I might say that it was ok for them to play quietly until they wanted to sleep but feel they need more than 10 hours at this age.

We do have another room which I like to have free for guests so we can seperate them if needs be but I would prefer not to.

What to do?

[mamsnet]

Mine have just been through a phase like that (they're 2 and 4) and it wore off pretty quickly..

Could they have a wee siesta? It is very hard for kids to go to sleep early at night now, isn't it?

[lizziemun]

I have 6yrs and a nearly 3yr dd's who share a room.

We had the same problem a little while ago. We solved it by putting dd2 bed 30mins before dd1 and nine times out of ten the younger one already asleep.

We just read story and then put on their story cd.