Desperate to get DD(5) to sleep!

[BFPDec21]

DD (age 5) fell asleep at 7.45pm this evening with me (9 months pregnant) conked out with her too. I got out of the bed at 8.30pm and she woke up.

She is still awake! I've had to swap with DH to deal with it but literally will not stay in bed and will not sleep.

I can't remember what this is like (although we're going to be reminded by DC2 soon), what can we do?

Wind down with her. Bath if she usually has one before bed, maybe even warm milk or just some water, book, cuddle, sleep hopefully! Pretend you're just doing bedtime and it's actually 7pm

She's probably chronically over tired now. She's also old enough to understand 'time to sleep'.
Keep it calm and quiet, drink, snack, teeth, bed, she's had lots of your time and attention so no drawn out bedtime. Into bed - gentle but firm instructions to stay in bed. Lights out, stay in the room but no chat. Good luck!

I know this sounds a bit mental given the time of night but when they get to that stage the only way I've found to snap them out of it is a change of scenery and ideally a blast of fresh air. If it is safe to do so all of you go for a walk for ten minutes and you should find she'll settle down after that.

Thank you! I'm going to keep this advice in mind if it happens again, I didn't think about restarting the routine.

I kept my bedroom dark and pretended I'd been sleeping since DH took over (essentially the same as I'd been doing in her room - might have even actually drifted off a few times!) and just let her get in with me for a cuddle. She was fast asleep within 2 minutes. So it probably is accurate about the change of scenery in some way.

We've got guests so I think she's worked herself up with all the excitement.

She won't be happy being woken at 8am but I can't have her sleeping in all morning and then doing the same tomorrow night because she's all out of sync.

SunflowerGardens advice is spot on - if DD really couldn't settle I would actually get her out of bed and do something different for half an hour.. sometimes we would go outside and walk the dog. It's been a few years since we had to do that and I had forgotten! But it was oddly effective.