DD(7) is on a mission to stay awake all night. And manages it. It first started on Weds when she came in on Thurs morning and proudly announced that she'd been awake all night. Then promptly fell asleep in the car on the way to school. So we took her home, feeling that it wasn't the school's responsibility to look after a 7 year old who'd not slept all night.
Thurs night she said she was going to do it again so obviously we tried to reason with her, explain the consequences; that she'd be in trouble at school, might lose her place on the school council, would miss her skiing lesson etc. All to no avail. Me & DH tried to make her go to sleep (do as you are told etc) and eventually gave up at 4.30am and went to sleep ourselves. Obviously she fell asleep again on the way to school and we brought her home.
We've both spoken to her at length, is there anything bothering her?, is she trying to get out of school? etc. But she says she's just doing it to see if she can and because she likes being awake at night when everyone else is asleep! To be honest at first we thought she might be ill and that's why she was awake but it does seem to be sheer willpower.
So we figured that if we couldn't actually stop her doing it, we'd make her feel she was allowed to do it, so we didn't appear to have a complete lack of control! So we laid down some ground rules; no disturbing anyone else and no playing her DS or reading, in the hope that she'd bore herself to sleep. So she literally sat all last night and watched the clock!! And is running around this morning, as bright as a button.
I know she hasn't been asleep as both DH and I have woken in the night and gone to see if she was asleep and she's been sat up in bed just staring at the clock.
Obviously we're hoping that it's going to be a short-lived phase but really don't know what to do. Anyone else been through this?