How to get a 7 year old to go to sleep earlier?

[Shouldittcnow]

My 7 year old has always been a natural night owl (doesn’t wake early, has energy in the evenings). But his sleep time has gotten out of control!

He goes to bed at 7:30 (same time as sibling) and then lies in his bed with his lamp on reading or colouring until 8:30 when I turn the lamp off. But every single night when I go to bed I discover he’s still awake! (9:30/10)

He wakes the following morning at around 8/8:30, which is fine for school, but I think he’s tired at the moment.

I have tried sitting in his room until he falls asleep (doesn’t work, he still falls asleep at 9/10, and that’s my whole evening sitting in the dark!) - I’m not sure what else to try.

Any suggestions?

Quite tempted to exhaust him with evening swimming lessons or something - we do this sort of thing on weekend mornings at the moment. I don’t know what to try!

11 hours is completely within the range of normal for a 7 year old, so if he's waking naturally then he likely doesn't need more sleep, so the way to get him to sleep earlier would by waking him up earlier, to attempt to move the entire period earlier.

Physical tiredness is a different sort of tiredness and will not regularly work to get him to sleep earlier, of course doing lots of exercise is great too.

I suspect the household noise eventually gets him up at 8. He’s quite sluggish in the morning (me too!) and lies on the sofa for a while before he can do much else. He’s also quite tired when I get him from school, which is why I’m wondering!

Some nights he gets 10 hours, some nights 11. Is 10 ok? I can’t tell if he’s just tired because school is tiring and he isn’t a morning person, or if he’s just going to sleep much too late!

10 is still within the normal range [*], but remember it's a range, so him as an individual might need more, 10 or 11 most days is certainly nearer the average than too little though.

What happens when there's not the noise?

Post school tiredness is quite likely due to the stress and effort of school itself as much as overnight sleep, physical fitness helps mitigate that stress too - the tiring him out with exercise is likely a good thing to try for this too.

[*] www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4877308/