amount of sleep for a 3.9 year old - he seems to take ages to go to sleep!

[sparklemagic]

Just wondered if any of you have advice for me - my DS is four in August. Since he got past the baby stage, he's been an excellent sleeper, having twelve hours a night. He's always been an early riser though, up between 5 and 6am, though he plays happily in his room until our alarm goes so it's not a 'behaviour' problem.

We've always given him an early bedtime, 6pm ish in order that he gets the (nearly) twelve hours. Nights when he has been to bed later, he still wakes at exactly the same time in the morning.

However for the last couple of weeks he has been taking AGES to drop off at night, sometimes not asleep before 8 - 8.30pm, and up soon after 5am.

Can this be enough sleep?? We have the same bedtime routine as ever, bath, stories, milk etc, he gets lots of 'wind down' time....

any ideas??

do you leave him alone while he drops off or stay with him?

Hi Raggy, my DH does bedtime and he usually stays until DS is asleep. Has done this for a long time, and it's never been a problem, DS never gets up in the night; though I know the textbook advice is to leave them alone to drop off.

DH reads stories, they have a chat and then DH tells DS it's rest time, no more talking....

ds1 is 4 in Sep, he goes to bed (after bath) around 7.30pm and we read stories. We usually leave around 8pm and he goes to sleep between 8pm - 9.30pm depending on whether he is tired, I just leave him to it and he turns his light off and goes to sleep when he wants to. He usually wakes around 7am and is rarely tired in the day.
This is a little more sleep than your boy but not much more.
If he is ok in the day then I wouldn't worry, if he is showing signs of tiredness in the day then maybe you need to address it somehow.

sorry for late reply.... the reason i ask is because we had exactly the same scenario with ds end of last year. i always stayed with him until he dropped off then when he got to about 1yr and 10 mths he started to take longer and longer (sometimes 2 hours ). anyway dd was around 6wks old at the time and it just wasnt feasible (sp) for me to stay with him that long so i had to train him to go to sleep on his own. i tried the rapid return thing off the telly but over 3 nights it was still taking 100 plus times with no sign of reducing, refusing to give up i decided to just be really hard and tell him if he got out of bed i would shut the door and leave him! anyway i only shut the door one time and he has gone to bed happily on his own ever since ( he has story cuddles etc first of course ) . Anyway, more importantly from the very first night he went without a hitch he was fast asleep within 15 min and 6 months on he is the same now. goes to bed at 7 asleep by 20 past. in the end i came to the conclusion i must have been keeping him awake because he knew i would leave once he was asleep iykwim . hth

I guess it depends a lot on the individual child...dd is only 2.4, and still has an hour's nap most days, but has never slept more than 11 hours per night, and still doesn't. If I put her to bed earlier than 8.30 (we're not early risers, dd included!), she will play and talk to herself in her bed for up to 1 1/2 hours before falling asleep - depending what time she got up in the morning - and I don't stay with her while she falls asleep.

I've noticed the warmer weather and light evenings have had an impact on how long she's staying awake recently - maybe thats one of the elements for your ds? Though I think the last post is very interesting, re going to sleep alone or not.

yes, thanks elibean and raggy

I definitely think it's time to address the issue of him falling asleep on his own...he always did do as a baby, funnily enough, then had a wobbly phase when he got a bit clingy so DH started to stay with him....we have held off changing it because it hasn't caused any wakings in the night etc but it certainly resonates what you said Raggy about the fact that DH's presence might actually be keeping him awake!!!

Will try changes and see, thanks guys.

my dd used to love me lying with her until she fell asleep [and i enjoyed it too]and then one day she actually said, its o.k mommy you can go now as i want to go to sleep and she was around 3 yrs old! now she falls asleep much quicker when i`m not around yet its the opposite with my son