14 year old son needs a lot of sleep in order to be ok the next day.
Always has done since birth.
Needs masses of sleep.
When overtired, he gets massively overstimulated, goes 'wired' and won't or can't sleep. Not enough sleep and he goes into meltdown.
He's the same now at 14 as he was at 3 months.
I try really, really hard with teaching him good sleep hygiene, getting into bed with enough time to read and wind down, before going to sleep.
All his life I've been strict about bedtime routine and I have had to be because a late night causes distress for him on some sort of neurological basis.
So now he's 14 and has started saying no when I tell him it's time to get into bed and start reading to wind down, ready for sleep.
No, no, no, go away, NO, he shouts.
OK, I say. Stay up then.
The next day, he is a wreck. Unable to get up. Unable to get ready for school. Late into school. Annoying his friends who he's arranged to walk in with because he doesn't show up cos he can't get out of bed. Eventually he does surface in a FOUL mood. As in me and DD run for cover. When he gets home from school, he's all over the place. Horrid mood. Snappy. Irritable. Bad tempered. Arguing with DD. Monosyllabic to me. Blanking me. Ignoring me. Ticking all over the place. Tap tap tap. Hum hum hum. Cough cough cough. He drains of all colour in his face. Goes white. Eyes like saucers. Dark circles under eyes. Yawning constantly. He's like someone who is delerious. This gets worse as the evening goes on. It's painful to watch my child like this.
Then we hit the same conversation in the evening. I tell him he's overtired. He argues at me that he's not. I put my foot down and insist he needs to relax and wind down and get to bed. He shouts NO at me multiple times.
I leave him and go to bed myself.
No screens allowed after 8pm BTW. So hes not gaming or on his phone. He's just zoning around wandering about his room dysregulated but refusing to go to sleep. The more overtired he gets, the more dysregulated he gets, and the more he won't go to sleep. He's taller than me, I can't put him to bed. It's like having a 5ft 9 baby who you're trapped in a negative bedtime cycle of overtiredness with.
Next morning, repeat. Can't cope with alarm, getting up, school prep, or the day.
When he does this on Friday nights and Saturday nights, it wrecks the next day. He either refuses to go out with us for family plans. Or he does come but ruins it with his appalling mood. Or he cancels his social plans with friends. Or he stays in his room all day zoning out doing nothing.
But. ....when on the rare occasion he admits defeat and actually goes to bed at the time i tell him he needs to (this is very very rare), after still arguing whilst his head is on the pillow, arguing how "stupid" it is going to bed at tgis time, I've timed it and within 3 to 4 minutes he is DEEPLY asleep. Sleeps through the night for 12 hours. Then wakes up smiling, happy, fresh faced, colour in his cheeks, good humoured, chatty, basically the boy he really is underneath the crippling overtiredness. Then he marvels all day about how good he feels. And the tics vanish.
We get to the evening, he starts refusing to go to bed again and we're back to all those symptoms again.
So what do I do?
Battle him over bedtime or leave him to it and let him suffer the next day?
He will not listen to reason when I try and talk this through with him when it's not bedtime. He's more stubborn than anyone I've ever encountered.