Almost 9yo takes HOURS to go to sleep

[27Bumblebees]

My almost 9yo dd is doing my head in. She has never been a good sleeper, didn't consistently sleep through until around 3yo and often wakes in the night. The problem is the evening. She is clearly tired, yawning and rubbing eyes, but fights it so hard that she takes forever to fall asleep. Then is tired in the morning, rinse and repeat.

Here's her routine:

6pm dinner
6.30 Shower, pjs,
7pm "supper" of a biscuit and some milk
7.30 get teeth brushed and fully ready for bed
7.45 reading
8pm lights out (night light, white noise, fan by the bed as she says it helps - we're in summer here) including a nice cuddle and chat.

It gets to 9.30 and she's been out of bed 5 times for water, needing another wee, sore tummy muscles, not tired, worry about school. I've caught her reading in the dark when I've said to listen to her body and rest.

She doesn't have screen time after dinner at all.

Besides drugging her unconscious (obviously a joke), what can I do??? She is pretty highly strung temperament wise, a worrier, and stubborn. Certainly not easy going like her little brother who just yawns and drops off to sleep with a cuddle.

Ideas anyone??

Read for longer till she physically can't keep eyes open.

Thanks, I have tried that. She was still up at 11pm.. literally grimacing to keep her eyes open so she could keep on reading.

Do you think with time and consistency she might drop off earlier?

My dd is the same except she can go til 1am no issues, she has a melatonin prescription. Weighted blankets can help but useless for hot weather. In the end, I encourage her to draw as that helps her stop worrying, and read until she falls asleep.

some of us just don’t sleep well so learning to distract ourselves and use good coping mechanisms is important.

Yes it’s definitely a marathon, it’s more about embedding strategies than any one night.

Her evening routine starts very early for a 9 year old.
It's just dragging out the bedtime way before she actually needs to be thinking about bed.
Does she need the shower every day? I found a bath/shower for my girl just hyped her energy up. Could she shower straight after school instead if she needs one.
She doesn't need supper at 7 if dinner is at 6 - she's just getting an extra energy rush. If she is thirsty she can have water.
It feels like you have this long routine to get "ready" for sleeping but by the time it's time to sleep she's far too awake.

Later bedtime.
Her bedtime is massively drawn out.
I'd suggest supper later and reading for longer and lights out at 8.30. Any last minute wees etc and after 9pm she has to stay in bed except to go to the toilet (and emergencies)
Have you tried a weighted blanket?

Thanks that's a helpful perspective. Her brother is getting ready for bed for 7pm (he's 4yo) so getting her ready for bed was keeping her busy while I see to him and the baby. Maybe she could be writing/reading while we do bedtime for the little ones and then she does bedtime. Showering after 7pm is tricky as our house layout means she'll wake the baby so that's also needing to be balanced.

I find myself saying unhelpful things like "just let your body rest and go to sleep", in my own exhaustion and exasperation but need some better ways to manage the endless getting out of bed saying she can't sleep

No I haven't but I'll look into it now, thanks

I agree with later bedtime, but I would have a strict rule of only getting out of bed for the toilet once she's in bed and no communication or disturbing anyone else.
Let her read until she falls asleep.

As a child I used to read under the covers with a torch, but I soon learnt that feeling tired the next day wasn't that great and the next night I would fall asleep quickly.

My Dd used to have trouble falling asleep most of her life. As an adult she now feels she can only fall asleep with her partner in bed with her.

We tried many things, at one point we even let her lie on the sofa with us til she was sleepy (but the rule was she had to be lying facing away from the tv screen). That worked for us for a while, but we were able to do that because we had no other children and she was light enough to carry.

One thing I did discover by accident. When she was younger, I did both a Swedish massage course and Reflexology (foot massage basically). Of course I used her to practice on. She was in the last year of primary school.

I found over time that the relaxation she experienced during my practice sessions could be transferred to her bedtime routine. This was mainly the reflexology. This involved me sitting at the bottom of the bed massaging her feet gently in a prescribed order, low lights, no talking. She seemed to fall asleep much quicker.

i didn’t have to do it every night, but if she was having particular trouble falling asleep after bedtime I would spend 15 mins on her feet. I usually did this when I was checking in on her being asleep and she wasn’t.

I remember this being particularly helpful the night before an important entrance exam for secondary school.

I was probably a bit of a softie when it came to parenting but I’m glad I was. It turns out she was coeliac and she often had an uncomfortable tummy but didn’t know that this wasn’t normal.

I've caught her reading in the dark when I've said to listen to her body and rest

Give her a lamp and tell her no coming downstairs, and if she can't sleep, read.

My DD was very similar. Found it very hard to fall asleep and described it almost as if the harder she tried the more active her brain because. She's not diagnosed but I have suspected ASD for some time.
Our strategies were to have a later bedtime than most of her peers and if she really couldn't sleep I would get her up again and she could sit and quietly watch TV with us. The thinking being that bed is a place to sleep - not to be awake.
If she's awake after we've gone to bed, she stays in bed and remains calm - good quality rest is almost as good as sleep, she found that very comforting.
She genuinely seems to need less sleep than most and seems to catch up on lost sleep in the holidays - definitely an owl not a lark.
We got a weighted blanket when she was maybe 12 or 13 as I had read they were helpful for some people - it's the sensation of being swaddled and I think it seems to help restless limbs being more still. For her it's been brilliant and she finds it easy to fall asleep.
It might be worth exploring if your DD is anxious about anything - turned out DD was very frightened by the sensation of 'falling' asleep and was harbouring fears of not being able to wake up again.

Also if she can't sleep instead of saying she can read let her do relaxing things instead - as long as she stays in bed/her bedroom.
Things like the fancy colouring books, making bead bracelets, building Lego.
Reading - especially if a good book - can keep a person awake for longer (they want to know what happens next).
My girl would be kept quiet and relaxed by sorting her beads.

My son had trouble sleeping. At 7 he went to bed at 8.30 and at 9 more like 9.30. I think spending hours in bed isn't healthy, better to go when you're quite tired and then read our chat for max 30 min, maybe just 15 min and 15 min of trying to sleep.

I would redo her routine completely.
A biscuit and milk and hour before going to sleep probably isn't helping and only an hour after dinner, it isn't necessary. You're giving her body more to digest when it hasn't even digested dinner. It isn't recommended that adults go to bed less than two hours after eating a meal, the same for children.
Does she really need to putting her pjs on at 6:30? That's really early for a nine year old.
Make sure she's drinking plenty during the day. She may genuinely need a wee if she's dehydrated as it concentrates urine which irritates the bladder.
Pushing back her bedtime half an hour may also help.

I was also going to say that her bedtime routine seems very drawn out.

My kids are younger, but I’ve found a bedtime routine totally counterproductive. Instead we do dinner when home from school, then bath/shower, then lots of playing with a snack stop. Bedtime is just: stop, brush teeth, in to bed. They do much better with that than a long winding down period. If we start to get issues we move bedtime 15 mins later and that seems to work.

So it could be worth trying to switch things up, and possibly move bedtime a bit later.

As someone who has always struggled to sleep & classed as worrier, I would look into helping her worry less but in the meantime I would let her read, nothing worse than lying worrying not able to sleep, it just makes it worse

Also lots of kids that age would be out doing an activity like swimming or brownies etc until 8 so maybe going for a walk after tea or something else as it's a long time to be ' getting ready for bed'. A shower shouldn't stop a baby sleeping, if all household noises are reduced, it can lead to more sleep problems.

I have an almost 11 year old like this. I delay going to get ready for bed until I think she's settled but she starts moving about or talking to me. We were chatting last night at 10.30 after she was meant to have gone to sleep at 8.45. I have said she can read until she feels sleepy and no pressure but it doesn't improve. Our sex life is non existent lol. Obviously that isn't the main concern 🤣 but I feel your pain. She was great until the first lockdown

Also for context she has to have devices off and getting ready for bed at 8.15- in bed for 8.45 reading and not getting up again. Weekends it's 10

I'd do:-
Dinner 6pm
Toys, reading etc downstairs til 7.
Put her in a bath at 7 while you go put the little one to bed.
Out the bath at 7.30/7.45, teeth and pjs then
Into her room for a chapter of a book (read to her)
Lamp on and a stack of appropriate reading books put beside her then you go downstairs and leave her to it.

I'd probably sneak up about 9 to turn the lamp off if she's fallen asleep, or leave it on if she's still reading.

You can get magnesium gummies for children, it's supposed to help their bodies relax and wind down. I use it as I struggle to switch off and calm my brain down and it helps loads xx

Mine (similar age) took ages to fall asleep from very young age. There was no point going to bed early, it would only make getting to sleep more difficult as at some point he would feel annoyed that he does not sleep and this feeling would make falling asleep harder. So making sure there was some excersise during the day, later bedtime, reading in bed for a bit longer, and then quiet relaxing music did help a lot. But mine was never asleep before 9 pm, which is fine by me, we have a nice time in the evening together. I think some parents insist on earlier bedtime than kids actually need.

My DD is the same. She has ADHD.