4 Year Old Not Sleeping...

[OlliesAmy]

I am a step parent to a 4 year old (he will be 5 in June) and have been living with him since July last year. Oliver had a few problems with sleeping when I first moved in (and beforehand too) but was generally very, very good. His only issue was a few whinges and groans, the usual, 'I don't like sleeping' etc, but once asleep, he was asleep (in a year I have known him to wake twice in the night...)!!!.
Since he started school in September,his Dad and I noticed that Oliver had stopped the whinging and (or so we thought) was beginning to fall straight to sleep. When we started checking on him, we realised that he wasn't actually asleep even up to two hours after he had been settled.
Ollie has a bedtime routine of pyjamas on, 15 minutes cuddle downstairs with milk, toilet, teeth, 2 stories in bed then sleep. This happens at 7pm each evening so he is always settled by 7.30pm.
From what we can gather, Oliver isn't fidgiting around (anymore than any other 4 year olds) and is trying his absolute hardest to sleep. He does not play/talk etc as we never hear him at all.
He said it was because he was afraid of the dark, we put on a hall light and it didn't help, we have blackout curtains to help in these summer months, we have tried suggesting things for him to think about (superheroes saving the day, family trips to the beach etc) to help him drift off
He is very intelligent and therefore could just be 'thinking' but we are worried that some evenings, he takes just over 2 hours to finally drift off to sleep. We don't checkup on him much and we put no pressure on him to sleep as it may play on his mind that he 'must go to sleep right now' thus, keeping him awake longer.
We have run out of ideas, we have routine, calm, peace of mind, love and a free speech policy to share worries....
Please help us with any advice you may have?
Thank you x

Hi the 1st thing is don't worry not all children find it easy to go to sleep on a night time, I had 4 go through the exact same thing one has a physical disability and also ADHD. They had a routine basically the same as yours, but I found that , that was the problem the routine had become too routine and thier bodies had adjusted itself to the routine. The way I sorted it was to (this sounds strange) confuse his body clock routine. what I mean is his body has started acting like a clock tic tok 7 o'clock pj's on now his body is in routine mode because it now expects things done in a certain way. So try to change only slightly one thing now and then eg: instead of pj's on at 7 do it at 6.45 or 7.15 or even read him 1 story as he is having his milk instead of 2 when he is in bed. The other thing is do you use normal wattage bulbs in your hall ? if so it could be too bright and keeping him awake try to get hold of a very low wattage coloured pigmy bulb these are ideal for leaving on and they come in diff colours get a couple of colours and let him choose which one he would like for that night (yellow,blue,green) ect. Some of the things I have mentioned worked for my children but may or may not work for oliver but it could be worth a try hope this helps in some way.

My DD (3) is afraid of the dark and takes a long time to go to sleep. Extra cuddles in the bedtime routine and an LED night light helped a bit.