DD 6 never gets to sleep before 10 - help!

[BayeauxT]

Hi, I thought I would post this here rather than 'sleep' as that seems to be more about babies and toddlers.

DD 6.5 has never seemed to need much sleep - dropped her daytime naps way before friends' babies, always taken a long time to get to sleep (although once asleep that's it - never wakes in the night). But over the last year it's been getting ridiculous - she's usually still awake at 10/10.30, even though we have bedtime at 8 with stories, which is usually finished by 8.45 latest.

I've tried everything I can think of - lights on till she feels sleepy (never), lights off completely, running her like a dog till bedtime, no tv, warm bath, no bath, warm milk, yada yada. It makes no difference. I have to wake her up at 7.45 for school, takes a while but she's ok once she's up and is generally happy and doing well at school.

She's prettt good and doesn't come downstairs, but I feel sorry for her lying up there not being able to sleep. I'm completely the opposite - fall asleep as soon
as my head touches the pillow! I can't extend her
bedtime past 9 because I work f/t and it's the only time I have to do wash/cook/clean etc but I don't know if I
should just accept this is how she's wired and let her play in her room or whatever.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Yep that's how she's wired, my youngest is roughly same age and will happily yabber onto herself until 10pm, then get up in the morning too! don't know how she does it and hope she grows out of it soon!

There's a thread further down in this section you could try reading - it's called 'Insomnia'

Thanks, I have bought the cd they mention in that thread, we'll see how it goes!

Can she read yet? If not then I would focus on helping her along with that.

For a long time my DD (nearly 7) was rarely asleep much before 10pm if not 10.30. She just didn't seem to need the sleep, although I felt that was much too late and couldn't be good for her. It also drove us all mad as she was liable to run around or disturb her younger brother and sister as she was bored.

We tried everything, like you, including relaxation CDs etc. She hated sitting up in her room on her own (although like your DD she was pretty good about it), but I just wanted her to get off to sleep.

Everything changed for the better around 6 months ago when she started proper independent reading of chapter books. She now goes up happily to get ready for bed at about 8pm and then reads for an hour in bed until 9pm. I set her alarm to go off at 9pm so she has to turn her lights off then (although I will usually try and go up and kiss her goodnight at that time and turn light off / say goodnight etc). She just loves reading her books and it must relax and tire her as she is now usually asleep not that long after lights out and always seems to be asleep by 9.30 now which is a big improvement.

We are all much happier. It can't be long now before your DD learns to read, particularly if you focus on it a bit. My DD started with those awful rainbow fairy books (endless rows of them can be found in the library), she totally loved them. I would read her a page or two then get her to read a bit with my help, then ask her to read the next page on her own and I'd carry on the next night and so on and in no time she was motoring through them on her own. We now spend a lot of time in the library and her reading has streaked ahead of most of her class simply because as she doesn't seem to need so much sleep the reading has become unbelievably important to her as a distraction and escape

Hi Nelly, thanks for the reply. Her reading is coming along but she still prefers just looking at the pictures - sometimes I'll come up and find a huge pile of books next to her bed. But in that thread on insomnia someone said they rubbed their DC's feet so I've tried that and it has worked 2 nights in a row - she is asleep by 9.30 which is a huge improvement. She says it feels really nice and I find it really relaxing too. CD should arrive later this week but touch wood I wont need to use it. Thanks for all the replies.