Anyone else child never slept the recommended amount?

[user8765]

Since DD was born her sleep has never been great. I remember it taking forever to get her to sleep and she woke every couple of hours for much of her first year.
All day time naps stopped completely before she was 2.
She is now 4 and getting her to sleep is still hard work. I'm worried she has probably never had the recommended amount of sleep for her age group. She has only just gone to sleep (9.45pm). She will be up for school 7.30 am tomorrow. I can't get her to go to sleep earlier. Even her first full week in school I remember all the other parents saying how tired their DC were and how they were asleep by 6.30/7pm. Even then she still did not go to sleep any earlier. Most nights it averages around 9pm.

Can this just be normal that she actually needs less sleep than average child her age? Anyone else DC similar?

Yes im actually shocked ds 9 is asleep now he was up till three thirty and beyond today I did let him sleep in a bit this morning which I don't usually do but he hasn't slept all week if I'm honest and we have school tomorrow he might get up super early too so im currently failing to get to sleep

Ds has just nodded off. He will be up at 6.30 without me waking him.

I used to get stressed about the late bedtime until I realised the only person it negatively affected was me! Now I've learnt to accept it.

Yes, mine is a teenager and just never really slept.

Dropped to no naps at 12 weeks which was the biggest killer. Didn't go through the night reliably until about 7YO and still wakes for the day before 6. Does have ADHD though.

Got my DC (just turning 5) to sleep 45 minutes ago. He'll be up around 7 or 7.30 tomorrow. This is pretty usual here when the days get longer.

My 5 year old usually sleeps 8:30pm to 6am. He won’t fall asleep any earlier and has never stayed in bed longer than 6am. He has plenty of energy and it doesn’t seem to affect him.

My 3 year old sleeps 6:30pm-7:30am with a 2 hour day time nap! She loves her sleep.

My 16 year old needs about 4 hours. Always has. It gets easier once they can entertain themselves at night and in the morning! She has no SEN and is on track to get great GCSEs. She just doesn’t need sleep. It was KILLER when she was a little- I was so chronically sleep deprived between her and my second child that I genuinely have no concrete memories from about 2009-11. Some people just don’t need sleep!

My 2.5 year is also doing 8.30 - 6.00 regularly now and has gone and dropped his nap too.

He goes to nursery full time so is getting plenty of stimulation every day, he's just never been a massive sleeper. When he was younger (6 months-ish) he used to have 15 minute power naps and be ready to go again.

Yes, but she has ADHD.

👋🏻 yes DS4 has never slept through the night his longest sleep was 5 hours I thought he'd died 😬. He didn't nap during the day after 1 and seems to have boundless energy.

Ds was never a sleeper. Terrible as a baby. He slept through a handful of times. He now goes to sleep aged 10 at 9.15 and sometimes later. Usually up at 6.30 or 7. Doesn't sleep in no matter how late he goes to bed. He has ASD.

Nope - ASD here too.

DS was a terrible sleeper. Only started sleeping through the night reliably when he was 6. Would get over tired and difficult. But eventually I came to accept - with help of the paediatrician - that he simply didn't need as much sleep as others. He's also able to "catch up" when he gets too little overall by sleeping in on a day in the weekend.

He's 11 and goes to bed at 10. often still awake until about 11:15 or so. But only wakes up at 7:30.

If she's showing signs of over tiredness, it's worth trying more. But maybe she's just one who needs less. And arguably, 9-7:30 is actually 10.5 hours which isn't bad.

DD 4 is exactly the same. Dropped naps before the age of 2 & can get by on 9 hours sleep although probably needs 10. I used to really envy other peoples children that could nap for 2 hours then still sleep for 12 but I’ve learnt to accept it (sort of!)

Yes, NT late teen now, hoping to study medicine and take advantage of the endless energy. It gets easier once they no longer need you to entertain them. I would maybe suggest starting to have her going to her room to play quietly/ read for an hour or so before bedtime 'because she is such a big girl now'. Then do bedtime. Ours would be in bed about 8.30 but then up about 5.30/6 but we started letting her come downstairs and turn the TV on. Now the 5.30 mornings are taken up with revision.

So they never slept more, it just was easier to manage.

Both mine. Stopped napping by 14 months. Ds happily starts the day at 5am (had the odd 3 somethings though), bounces off to school, does loads of extra curricular stuff and falls asleep around 10pm. Dd is slightly better in the morning but is often still pottering in her room at gone 11pm.
They are 7 and 3. Nothing we've tried has them sleeping for 10 to 12 hours at a time. I'm a terrible sleeper too though, can easily manage on 5 hours (luckily). According to my mum I only started sleeping once I discovered alcohol in my teens.

Yep. He doesn’t seem to know how to sleep. Not as a baby and not a decade later. No SEN that we know of. Usually gets 10pm - 6am and wakes a couple of times.

Yes! DD 13 never slept. I remember when she was a lot younger, friends saying their similar age kids were going for naps in the day and and I was shocked that actually l happened!!

we have everything we can think of to help her sleep including (but not limited to):

-a double bed
-memory foam (simba) mattress topper
-silk pillow cases
-a weighted blanket
-a galaxy light
-a fan
-a mini fridge (for when it’s too cold for the fan and she needs the white noise 🙄)
-blackout curtains
-‘sleep well’ milk drinks every night 30mins before bed - I really overkilled the ‘medicine’ in them for maximum placebo effect.
a careful structured bedtime routine (including kissing each dog twice,l 🙄and a couple of pages of book she reads herself now.

I still often wake up to pottering about early hours of the morning and reports that she has been awake since 5am.

she never seems to need sleep though, never tired. If we go on holiday, she can be up at 5am airport, travel, start the day in bother country, go all day and out for dinner when the rest of us will have napped & be exhausted!

My son falls asleep at midnight. He's up for 3am or earlier every day.

Yes, mine too has never needed as much sleep as the guidelines say. She's 7 now and was asleep at 10pm and will be up for school fine and full of beans tomorrow. At least she doesn't tend to wake up at 4.30am anymore! I've learnt the hard way not to try and make her go up earlier as its just a waste of time.

The only time she ever falls asleep early is when she's unwell, and that doesn't happen very often.

Combo of asd and adhd, none of mine sleep, one went 4 days and nights awake last month 🙈 (we took shifts 🤣)

My youngest teen would stay awake until late, visit in the night, every night, and be up hours before us. We either constantly took him back to bed or laid in his bed for hours every night. Stopped napping soon after he turned 1.
Age 11 we moved and he had to share with his sibling for a year - settled from day 1, hasn't bothered us at night since. He does still stay up later than his older siblings and is normally still awake after we go to bed and up before us. Odd thing is that his sibling loves sleep and still tends to be asleep by 9 aged 16, gets so grumpy without enough.

Yes, NT 8 year old. When she was a baby I worried that she wasn't getting enough sleep. When she was a toddler she used to get annoyed when her friends had to go for a nap :) But I stopped worrying about it then because she always had plenty of energy.

Do you all think it's a sign of ASD or ADHD ?

My two certainly something about them both, various issues from speech to running in repetitive circles but I've never pushed for a diagnosis. Anyway both won't sleep until 9.30 / 10 pm and wake 6.45 ish . So maximum sleep is 10 hours. It's better now 2 year doesn't nap as she sleeps the 10 hours at night rather than 2 hour then 8 hours. I can't understand how people get kids in bed asleep for 7pm.

My 4 year old has been a terrible sleeper her whole life. She’s hard to get to sleep, often wakes for hours in the night wanting to play and is usually up bright eyed and bushy tailed by 7 at the latest. She just doesn’t seem to need the amount of sleep my eldest did. She needed 7-7 every until fairly recently (she’s 9 now).

I think she’s NT although she is impulsive and can’t sit still. She’s easy to engage in activity though and school haven’t raised any concerns, although she isn’t the best behaved child. She just doesn’t seem to need much sleep. We did an early flight (5.30-am) recently and everyone else was flagging by the time we arrived at our holiday destination. She wanted to go in the pool.