Any suggestions on getting my 5 year old to go to sleep

[Claire236]

I've got a 3 month old baby & pretty much since I had him my 5 year old has become a nightmare to get to bed. He goes willingly enough, has story & backrub but that's where the trouble starts. He usually stays in his room but he gets out books & toys & frequently doesn't go to sleep until 2 hours after he's gone to bed. He insists he isn't tired but he quite obv is. Then he has to be woken up for school in the morning. Any suggestions?

I would recommend Children's Meditation CDs. You can buy some on Amazon by a lady called Christaine Kerr. They are guided meditations (little mini stories) read in a extremely relaxing voice with some calming background music and there are ones to suit boys and girls. I sometimes listen to them myself if I'm finding it hard to sleep and don't usually get past the first story before snoozing!!!
They might be worth a try.

Sometimes children are very focused on actually dropping off to sleep and if it doesn't happen straight away, they decide it's not going to. My DD used to complain after about three minutes that she couldn't get to sleep so we told her to just lie quietly and still with her eyes closed so she could rest, and that it didn't matter if she didn't go to sleep. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, she'd just drop off.