flicka wrote:
My DS was a truly terrible "going to sleeper". Once he was asleep, he was fine, but he could NEVER go to sleep like my other kids did. We despaired. Because he would get up and sneak about and do naughty things. Stairgate - climbed over it. Nothing worked. I used to sit outside his room telling him to get back into bed every couple of minutes for HOURS. It took us ages to realise that he really just didn't need the sleep.
We would get him up ridiculously early, thinking that it would surely tire him enough to have him go to sleep more easily at night. No, didn't work. We took him on long bike rides/walks as he got older, but all we ended up with was a fit child and exhausted parents.
Now eleven, he still isn't asleep until gone 11pm, frequently much later, and we have finally realised that there isn't much we can do about it.
We wondered if he had ADHD, but no, only traits, mostly the HD as his concentration was never too poor.
We tried dietary changes, fish oils etc, but nothing worked. We are really really careful to look what has gone into his food in the way of additives, but he is still sometimes climbing the walls with energy, when we are nodding off.
With age, he has become more easy to reason with, and he will amuse himself fairly safely when sent up to bed, rather than getting up to no good.
I think he is just one of those people that needs very little sleep. He stopped his daytime sleep at less than 18months (my mum says I stopped mine at 12 months) and I foolishly thought that would help him get off in the evening, but it didn't.
At least your DS is actually tired. Mine never was and still isn't. I think he runs on long life batteries.
Good luck.
Golly this could be one of my sons!
The one big difference is that my awake boy tends to go a few days with not sleeping until late, then on, say, the 4th night, he will be totally vile and fall asleep at 8pm! They (twins) are both in ready for bed and upstairs, bit later now, by 8, I read until 8.15 then they read by themselves with limit of 9pm. We still sometimes get difficulties though, with the one especially. He has always been a poor sleeper and real problems with self soothing. Now at 10 we can reason with him better, so he isn't yelling at us in the middle of the night, but he does still come in occasionally and just touch my cheek (sweet!) then back to bed. Sometimes though he will appear downstairs in the evenings 2 or 3 times and its really hard for him to get off to sleep. The light evenings don't help of course. Not sure what the answer is and suspect that as in general he functions pretty well he just doesn't need the sleep.
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