my 5 year old DD won't sleep or hardly

[Lulu57]

I'm at my wits end! My DD manages just about 5, maybe 6 hours per night. She just won't sleep. Last night it was 1am by the time she settled! She needs to get up at 6.15am to get ready for school (school starts at 7.25am). It's now 9.30pm and she just now seems to be quieting down. Every night, she goes to bed at 7.30pm, gets a bedtime story, a kiss good night, I leave her room, but 5 mins later she is downstairs and starts to play up. The bringing her back to bed etc will take a minimum of 2 hours if not longer. This has been going on for a very long time and I am exhausted. When I went to see the HV about this problem a couple of years ago, she just said, that unfortunately, my DD is one of them ppl that don't need a lot of sleep. The problem is, I struggle with just 6 hours of sleep, especially now that I am pregnant and I find it hard not to lose my patience with her, as I feel so tired and sometimes wish I could have an hour or so to myself in the evenings. She still has tantrums during the day, so I still think that she's lacking sleep. Putting somebody constantly back to their bed is one thing, but how do you make them sleep?

I was wondering if there any other children that age out there that sleep so little.

Would really appreciate any comments/feedback. Thanks x

forgot to say, she is 5 years old.

Does she do enough exercise - that might help - swimming after school - nice for you , bike riding etc
also if she is really not tired then just say she can play in her room -she doesn't have to go to bed but she can't come out - that worked for my DS sometimes

My 5 yr old has never seemed to need as much sleep as other dcs. I don't have the answer but what works for us is we give her a bath at 7.30pm (later than other friends dcs), read stories for about 20 minutes. I then sing to her til she falls asleep. I sing the same song over and over again and it seems to settle her (or bore her) to sleep. She usually drops off at 8.45pm. She would never stay in her room, despite lots of attempts. But do realise this is not the answer and I may well still be singing her to sleep when she's 15. Hopefully she'll be mortified at the prospect by then. But would also agree that exercise is a big help. She drops off really quickly if she's been swimming or scooted to the park after school.

That is very very little sleep for a five year old- maybe she is so chronically overtired she is running on adrenalin and can't switch off. My dd found it hard to get to sleep and seeing a cranial osteopath helped a lot,I would give it a try if I were you.We went to the children's osteopathy centre in London, where in the country are you? there was a thread not so long ago about cranial osteopathy with lots of posters from around the country.

I can sympathise with u, my ds 5 is similar to your dd. The things that have helped us are lots of exercise, he needs to get exhausted to be able to sleep well. A good 20 minutes of stories before bed and then once I switch the light off I stay with him until he falls asleep. This usually goes ok, but I have to be very firm - no talking, if he starts he won't stop. If he gets in a silly mood - starts to lick my face or be generally annoying I give him a warning, this usually does the trick. Once asleep I can go down for a few hours, but then dh or I have to sleep with him as he won't sleep by himself. This way we do get around 7 hours a night and ds about 11. He did use to sleep about 5 hours (broken) and seem to manage, but the overtired thing must be true, when I look back at some of his photos he has bags under his eyes from age 0 - 4! I know several people who have had success with the jo frost return to bed thing, which I am going to do once we move! Also have to say that things improved when I stopped getting so stressed out and giving ds so much attention about not sleeping. Iyswim. Good luck.