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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Help me with my 5 year olds sleep!

5 replies

Pearandstilton · 09/06/2024 21:16

It’s 9pm and he’s still not asleep.
He won’t go to sleep without one of us laying with him. I’ve been up here since 8pm. Me and DH don’t get any proper evening together, it’s so hard.

He has plenty of exercise: swimming, walking in the countryside where we live, jumping on the trampoline, he’s like a Duracell bunny, constantly on the go.

Even after school when I think he’ll be exhausted it’s the same.

What also makes it worse is that he comes into our bed every night between 12am and 1:30am. I can count on one hand the amount of nights he’s spent in his own bed all night. We try the whole putting him back in his own bed but he then wakes up again about 20 mins later. So for the sake of both our sanities and desperate for sleep we just let him come in, once he’s in our bed he sleeps through until the morning.

He also wakes up at 6am every morning, this week it’s even been 5:45am. And that’s after going to sleep past 9pm. The crazy thing is that he doesn’t seem tired either! He never crashed out, he’s not particularly grumpy. Sometimes a little after school.

His bedtime routine is as follows:
Bath, two stories of his choice in bed, lights out and night light on, he listens to his tonie box character while he goes to sleep too.

I’m hating my life at the moment. It’s putting a wedge between DH and I too as we don’t get any time together. I get angry at DS sometimes like I did tonight and then I feel bad because he obviously can’t help it, but it’s totally draining us. I dread bedtime, like when he was a newborn. He’s never slept well, he hardly napped as a baby and toddler. I had to drive him around in the car during the day to get him off to sleep, any tiny movement would wake him.

He’s very clever, talks constantly during the day and wants to know everything.

OP posts:
SquawkerTexasRanger · 09/06/2024 21:58

It sounds like he’s got low sleep needs if he’s not tired and only going to sleep
at 9pm and awake again at 6am.

I would work on that assumption and start working towards him falling asleep independently. So a new bedtime routine where he is in his room by 8pm and he’s allowed to quietly play and listen to Tonies until he falls asleep. That way you get a bit of an evening to yourself.

Hinkuy · 09/06/2024 22:19

ADHD! I have one of these. It's a fun ride OP. Does he read? We put ours to bed at 7.30 but she reads til 9ish and falls asleep. We still get our evening and she's happy. She wakes up about 6ish too and reads til 7 (grow clock is really good for this) and then makes her own breakfast (cereal) - she is just turned 7 and we've had this sort of routine since age 4. It's works for us.

Beyondthegalaxies · 19/03/2025 20:44

Come here to see if things have improved for you, OP? Did you change up the routine? I feel like my 5 year old has suddenly hit some kind of sleep regression. It's been really bad for the last month. Nothing has changed at home or at school, so I don't think there's anything worrying him. Like your DS, our DS's natural bedtime seems to be more like 8pm, but he's often awake until more like 9pm at the moment.

Monvelo · 19/03/2025 20:51

We ended up employing a sleep consultant and with her support we did something called bedtime tokens. We had a family meeting and agreed asleep rules, DD drew them. We then made loads of tokens, just slips of paper. DD could call me or get out of bed or whatever, but it cost a token. If she had tokens left in the morning, she got a reward. We got a Playmobil box set, split it all, and set it up like a tombola lucky dip. Obviously she wanted the van and the people but sometimes she just got a tiny fork! At first you set them up to succeed so do more tokens than you need. DD used 32 the first night. Then when they get into the swing of it you start to reduce the number of tokens. It did work! She got down to 6 quite quickly then got stuck for a bit before pushing through with sweet as an additional reward. I think it worked for us because it was a bit more psychological rather than everyone just saying put her back to bed without talking, which for us made things physically which we didn't want.

Monvelo · 19/03/2025 20:52

Ah bloody hell, zombie thread, didn't realise 🧟

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