10.30-10.45pm bedtime for DD11.

[TheLivelyCat]

To think 10.30 10.45pm is too late for bedtime for DD 11 year 6.

DD 11 has allways been a "night owl" from young. She is diagnosis as Autistic, and CAMHS has done an ADHD referral too. However lately shes been falling asleep what I would consider late for her age. Even on a school night needing to be up for 7am. We start a bedtime routine taking about 1.5h. Shower, Pjs, bedtime snack etc (she won't read at bedtime). She's the type that her head hits the pillow and her mind wakes up. I have to stay with her to settle her due to anxiety, and not wanting her waking younger DD up(being as boring as possible) this can take 15 to 30mins.
On a none school night it isn't an issue as she can sleep in. She never naps.

I've been given a sleep diary to fill in with the look at percribing melatonin, but meds is a last resort, so for my own peace of mind, I'm wondering what an average bedtime is for 11 year olds, and what whould you consider too late that it causes issues.

Average bedtime is too late then! Teacher here. Please send your kids to bed by 9pm latest in year 6. They need at least 10 hours. Kids these days are yawning through school - too many screens in rooms and not enough bedtimes. Mine went to bed at 8pm in yr 6. In this day of pushy parenting, the best thing you can do for your child’s academics is send them to bed earlier!

op this sounds a nightmare. I hope you can find something t o help her as sleep is so vital at that age and for general sanity. I hear melatonin can work wonders.

ours are grumpy if they don’t get a lot of sleep, but we live close to school, I go in hours of sleep not bed time. I work back from the time we need to get up and they seem to operate best with 9 to 10 hours sleep. So if we are up at 7.30 then between 9 and 10 is ok for bed.
I think you have to look at the wake up time for whatever is the next day and work out what number of hours sleep does your child need to function well, there is guidance on this but they are individuals and may need more or less sleep. In their good days, how many hours sleep did they get. Monitor it and work it out.
I have explained this to my kids and they have accepted this, they agree on the amount of sleep they need as we’ve looked at the evidence. When they’ve had less sleep then they don’t have great days.
I have been trying as well to make sure they get extra outside time like walks etc as they don’t seem to sleep well when they’ve had only a little fresh air that day either.

Almost 11Dd 9.30-10 asleep depending on what clubs etc. Up 7.30, sleeps in at weekends. Some weeks she’s tired if we’re busy but mostly this works fine.

Dd 11 has to get up around 6.30 for school, so goes to sleep at 8.30. IMHO pretty much all humans function best on 10 hours, and especially kids. (Obv I know the vast majority of adults - definitely including me - don’t manage anything close to that, but by God one’s health, happiness and performance improve during those rare periods it can be done!)

Problem is, whatever time she should be asleep in order to get enough good quality sleep to wake up in good time for school... is not necessarily the same as what time her body wants to sleep. Sometimes you can throw everything at someone and their body just doesn't cooperate. I went through secondary school coming home and crashing at about 5:30/6 for a few hours, then waking up and going through my evening routine and going to bed at about 2 to wake up at 7. Multiple times over years I'd think to myself right, I'm gonna sort this out, no nap for me when I get home today, surely I'll be really tired later and then I'll fall asleep at 10... and I just wouldn't. I'd be chronically overtired but still not actually sleepy until later, then after about 3 days I couldn't physically stay awake any more and would go back to the napping. It was not pleasant and I was tired most of the time, but it was what it was.

As an adult I remain tired most of the time but am significantly less tired when I can sleep on my own biological schedule, which is around 4am to 12pm naturally. When I have had jobs where I've had to work normal hours, I've survived with naps and weekend catch ups.

Sorry this probably isn't what you wanted to hear. Some people are just different. One thing that does help me to switch off and actually fall asleep though (which I've also always struggled with) is having something playing I know inside out. When I was younger it was stories on tape, now it's sitcoms. It's just enough stimulation to stop my mind racing but I don't feel the need to stay awake to follow the story as I already know it. Most nights, that's enough.

DS never slept to a regular pattern. He could go to sleep at midnight and be wide awake at 7. He is ND like me and sleep sometimes just doesn't happen at a set time. When he used to stay at friends I would have comments from parents that he was playing or reading at 4 in the morning. Luckily ( ?) I am exactly the same and worked with him to realise that bedtime was about relaxing and from about 13 he was totally independent in his sleep patterns in that he would go to be and not be up and about.
He's 22 now and still an insomniac!

When I was like this at that age (ADHD and asd ) my mum put a radio in my room or I could read. I’d frequently be awake until 12 though and even later in my teen years

what works for a NT kid won’t necessarily work for a ND one.

my own kids were exactly the same

i still have trouble sleeping at the age of 49 and I found that listening to something help.

I’ve always thought that I had awful trouble sleeping so it’s not fair to try and force my kids to sleep, just used to help them instead, even if it meant they were awake for a while.

Now for something scary/depressing. I'm 41 suspected asd and adhd, in bed 10:30 still awake at 3am. I take sleeping tablets and read for half an hour to an hour before turning lights off. It sucks, my mum watched every soap opera wating for me to sleep. It's like the switch that says "sleep" is stuck.

My daughter (10) is exactly the same, as soon as 8pm hits she is bouncing off the walls. She wasn't getting to sleep until 10-11pm.

I failed to get melatonin on the NHS so bought 1mg gums and it's been amazing. She is asleep by 8.30-9 every night now. It's so much better for her as ahs hated not being able to sleep which meant she started worrying etc. All of that is gone now.

My dc don’t have a bed time Friday/Saturday or holidays but gcse year term time they go to bed 9.30-10pm because they need their sleep. It’s a mutually agreed bedtime and thankfully they don’t piss themselves laughing because I’ve raised sensible dc. Once through their GCSEs, they will have earned their next level of freedom.

there’s lots of studies about sleep needed in dc.

Not when it comes to children. They might function well on 8 hours of sleep, but that doesn’t mean it’s enough.
They should be in bed by 9 p.m. at the latest and wake up around 7 a.m. on school days.

She is waking up tired.
Push for a 9 pm lights out.
Trial it for three months

You too, Op. Go to bed earlier so that the whole house is sleeping earlier.

NT (as far as we know) 11y/o DD has always been tricky with bedtimes and getting to sleep, whatever the guidance says she’s always been getting at least an hour less than the minimum.
Holidays her natural rhythm seems to be 11pm - 8am, we try to nudge it to 10pm - 7am in term time which makes mornings a bit frantic but she doesn’t physically exist before 7am!
No issues at school with tiredness. She takes magnesium gummies every evening and we are pretty strict on being screen free from 8.30pm to wind down but she can read as much as she likes. Many nights we hear the book hit the floor when she drops off.

This. We ended up doing the same. Just be really careful and do your research on which gummies are reliably 1mg.

We did this in desperation when dd hit a very low time and no mental health help was coming. She wasn't sleeping, was barely eating, not even leaving the house due to autistic burnout. The lack of sleep exacerbated the problem, but she wasn't eligible for mh support while she was awaiting neurodevelopmental assessment.

It has been a gamechanger for us. 9pm asleep, solid 10 to 11 hours per night and she only needs 0.5mg. She describes it as calming her mind enough to fall asleep easily but without the woozy feeling.

Knowing when you need to go to bed is also being sensible. It's also learning to take responsibility for yourself.

If your kids need a 9:30 bedtime, fine, but many don't and are still passing exams and going to decent unis. I'd have found it ridiculously infatislising and downnright insulting to have a bed time at that age. I was a sensible teen though in general.

why dont you want to try melatonin? it’s apparently brilliant. im thinking of trying it myself!

I have a similar DS though he's a bit older, but it's been like this for a few years.
He's resting at least, we reckon, but we found that the ADHD Dude bedtime routine really helped. It's a paid parenting coach service but if you just watch the bedtime webinar you could always cancel.

Apparently my reply has been hidden. I don't get commission, honest!
We used melatonin for quite a while but it only made him sleep about half an hour earlier. The paediatrician was happy with his sleep length - 8-9 hours as luckily his school isn't far.

In ND people, melatonin is naturally reduced causing difficulty falling asleep, melatonin will help with this for school nights

Also WSS.

I'm not anit melatonin, but im trying to get an idea of what's an average amount of sleep for her age range. The sleep diary I'm doing is for CAMHS to look into melatonin as a possibility, if she mets the threshold.

That’s not true.
My 2 older children need a lot of sleep, more than the average. My 13 year old is usually asleep by 8.30pm.
Some children need more than average, some less than the average. There is a normal range… some will be at the top end of that, some at the bottom. My youngest (aged 7 and ND) is at the bottom end. My eldest 2 are at the top.

My just turned 12 year old goes to bed a 10.30 and a bit later on weekends when he can have a lie in.
He’s never needed much sleep (like DH) and Just isn’t tired enough to go to bed earlier.
If I’m tired and need an early night he’s more than capable of switching off at 10.30 and putting himself to bed. DH is usually awake somewhere in the house anyway.

DS1 (10) year 6 goes to sleep between 10-10.30. He's also up at 7.

Unlike your DD though he doesn't seem wired at bedtime, we watch TV together, then he goes to bed and falls asleep within 5mins of either reading or listening to a yoto player.

A few people have suggested ADHD for DS1 (hyperactive type) but at the moment it's well managed by doing a sport 7 days a week.

Kids magnesium supplements are meant to be good for sleep...we buy them occasionally (I'm not sure they worked but they are definitely good for sore muscles)

We compromised in bed at 10pm and cam listen to an audiobook and sit up and do puzzle book or colour. As tbh thats my bedtime routine. Im bed with audiobook and suduko

We did use melatonin from adhd/asd dr as one dc kept falling asleep in class as he couldn't switch off at night

I belive there have been some studies that some ND people.produce lass melatonin naturally