Aaah! Help me...
Since starting school in September my dd has completely turned the tables on bedtime. It is worth noting that I have just had a very bad pregnancy and my second dd was born in January, so there have been two massive changes for dd1 since last summer. September/October time also marks the last occasions of wearing pull ups to bed. She is now fully dry at night but will probably need to use the toilet 2-3 times after going to bed. The first occasion is usually when she is still awake, second occasion she will wake around midnight. Sometimes this has lead to horrendous tears as she does not quite fully wake up.
All appears ok on the surface at school, dd is capable and has made new friends.
Bedtime is currently hard work. There is no shouting/screaming but dd will go to bed and remain wide awake until 10:30/11pm easily. She will often load her bed with toys and books and we hear her chatting away/playing loudly for hours with no sign of wind down. She will sometimes call down to us for trivial issues that she wants fixing such as her dolls head has come off, she wants more milk, she wants the light in her wardrobe on (we always have door open and landing light on which provides more than enough light)
We have always used the same routine -warm milk, bath, story, musical nightlight and bed. The start of this routine is 6:15pm when my husband arrives home from work and we aim to have her in bed by 7 although most nights it's 7:15.
I would be tempted to let this phase ride out, she has had a lot of upheaval recently and I think a large part of it is to do with the fact that she can hear us downstairs with baby and feels she is being left out. However School is becoming affected... she looks absolutely exhausted, her teacher is saying she is finding it hard to concentrate, struggles to be active outside and can become tearful easily. She is very quiet at school which is not reflective of how she has been at her previous school nursery setting.
We watched a Mother's Day assembly the other day and she was practically falling asleep during it, was unable to join in with songs etc. She looks so tired when I pick her up at 3pm and all she then wants to do is watch tv. In the mornings she would easily sleep till 10, we have to drag her out of bed at 7:30 for school.
So far we have tried...
-Earlier/later starts to bedtime routine.
-Alternating adult in charge of routine
-Keeping same adult in charge of routine
-Star chart
-Removing toys every 30 minutes
-No light on/all lights on
-Choosing one or two toys to take to bed
-Pretending that whole family is going to bed at same time (this makes situation worse- if she knows that we are in bed and she is awake, she will be in and out of our room frequently until we give in and say she can sleep with us. This does then get her off to sleep but means our evening is over and we have to sleep too as we cannot have telly on or then suddenly get up... plus the baby will wake for a feed and we are back to square one)
Annoyingly she is not interested in playing with her toys in the daytime as she is too tired and all she wants to do is sit and watch tv.... if I don't allow it or say that tv time is over (I am quite strict about screen time and will limit it to 30 minutes) then is causes tears and tantrums and a horrendous evening ahead! It's almost like she finally gets up to bed, discovers a room full of toys and wants to play then!
She can't seem to verbalise how she is feeling, she doesn't associate her feelings with being tired as I suppose it's such a hard concept to understand. Therefore she can't see the value in getting to sleep earlier.
I really need advice on where to even start tackling this problem. I feel like I've been very cautious over starting school and the new arrival, I've ensured one to one time is there and even try to ensure baby naps between 3-6 as best I can so that dd1 has one to one time after school and I can meet her needs better... however part of me thinks that she really needs to accept that her sister is here and part of the family as well. This may be a topic for another board... thanks in advance xx