how much sleep is your 4 year old getting?

[maggiems]

I have twin boys aged 4.5 who started school in September. Got them into a routine of going to sleep by 8pm every night and they were sleeping right through for 11/11.5 hours. However since shortly after xmas DT2 has started waking really early, ie 5/6pm and the number of hours he gets varies from 9 to 11 hours per night, probably only 11 about once or twice a week, the average in the week being about 10. He seems to wake naturally each morning and there is no way he will go back to sleep. However he is really tired after school when he only gets 9/10 hours sleep and the teacher has mentioned that he gets tired also. I am putting him to bed as early as possible given that I get home at 6.30pm and he generally falls asleep within 10 to 15 minutes. At the weekend when I am putting him to bed about an hour later he is still waking early. I know he is not hugely sleep deprived but I just think he is not getting quite enough and what with being the youngest in the class with not the greatest attention span to begin with I am concerned , I am not getting any sleep either, worrying about him waking up. Just wondering how much sleep your school going 4 year olds get and whether it varies from night to night and what you think about the amount my DT is getting. Any suggestions would be welcome

Hi MMS,
I've got a great book by Prof Lyn Quine, a children's sleep expert at Kent Univ: she did a study of average sleeping time of children at various different ages and, for 4 years, it's 11.5; for 5, it's 11. Obviously, that's only an average and every child is different but hope that helps...

My ds is 4 but not at school yet.
He goes to bed at 7 - 7.30 and wakes any time between 5.30 and 7. On the early mornings he's a nightmare by teatime and its hard to keep him awake sometimes.
Not any help, but thought you might like to know you're ot alone.
The worst of it for us is that he clumps about at 5.30 (not very dainty, my ds!) and often wakes the dds - 6 year old who is at school and really needs hr sleep, and 2 yo who at least can have a nap later - but sometimes the whole house is up and going by 6, which means a grumpy mummy too!

My DS is also 4.5 and in Reception.

He is usually asleep by 8.30 and wakes around 7. Although today it was 6.20am.

Sometimes he has a "catch-up" - like last Friday night he feel asleep on the sofa just after 7pm and slept till 7.45 the next day.

If he goes to sleep on a regular basis before 8pm he is up at around 5.30/6 - which I CANNOT do.

He seems OK - teacher never says he's tired at school.

Right DS is 5 on Monday. Since starting school last September he has been hugely tired. He was going to bed at 7.30 and getting up between 7 and 7.30 (nearer 7 on the 3 days I work). However we have started putting him to bed nearer 7.20 because he is so tired. This is hard for me to do when I am working as I don't get home from work until 6 and have to feed the family etc. But we have been working on it. So DS is getting between 11.5 and 12 hours a night. I would say his usual was about 11 hours and 40 minutes and I am not sure this is enough for him!

You do have an issue though as he is tired so obviously not getting enough sleep. Why do you put him to bed later at weekend? Do you think that it might be an idea to knock this on the head for the time being unless a special event etc?

School does seem to tire DS out. He is much cheerier this week which is half term even though he was at the CMs yesterday all day he was definitely less tired. And she did plenty with them - they baked heart shaped biscuits, made valentines cards, did activities based on a book they read, played dominoes etc but they also took time out to watch Shrek.

School does tire them out at this age. My twin DDs (nearly 5) average 11 hours sleep, but sometimes one of them sleeps a lot less and is miserable during the day because of it.