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Behaviour/development

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7 year old won't go to sleep!

3 replies

whizzylala · 26/06/2011 21:59

This is driving me mad, my DD age 7 just will not go to sleep at night. I appreciate we all need varying amounts of sleep and often found it difficult to drop off as a child but really it is 10pm and she is still padding around finding reasons to come out of her room.
Some nights, like tonight, she looks knackered (Brownie sleepover last night) and others she actually doesn' t even look tired. We frequently say goodnight to her when we turn in between 9.30 and 10 (3 month old!) and it just doesn't seem right.
She has warm milk, reads quietly (for hours it seems) but nothing helps. We have tried making her go earlier, later to see but we need some grown up time so I am afraid she reads from about 8-30.
She is always shattered in the morning and moans that she is too tired to get up! If there isn't school then she will sleep to about 8am only.
We do live in a bungalow so I think we are missing the barrier of stairs when it comes to popping out. We don't enccourage her and she certainly doesn't get a nice reception for her frequent moans!
Is this normal and how can I help her?
Thanks.

OP posts:
whizzylala · 26/06/2011 22:11

Oh and this has been going on months and she has a black out blind so don't thnk it is related to summer!

OP posts:
NeverendingStoryteller · 28/06/2011 11:29

So sorry you are having a tough time - I didn't want your post to go unanswered, so just giving some support, really. When my 7 year old boy is being occasionally difficult about nodding off to sleep (his bedtime is 7pm), I will sit in the room with him until he's sleeping. Our mantra at bedtime is "you can't fall asleep unless your eyes are closed". So, I make him curl up, and I sit watching him (no discussions) until he nods off. Once we had to tell him that if he was too tired he would miss a favourite activity, and when he messed us about we did take the activity away, so he knows we mean what we say and we don't tend to have too many problems now. It did take a while to set up expectations and to stick to them with no discussion :) Good luck :)

NeverendingStoryteller · 28/06/2011 11:34

Also meant to ask if you've tried the experts on the 'sleep' forum?

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