About the sleep thing.
I think it's important to keep two things apart: it is very typical for gifted kids to have difficulties falling and staying asleep. That it is typical for them to need less sleep than typically developing kids is a myth, true for some like PPs have described, but not true for the majority who need either as much or (a smaller subset) even more.
It has been our experience with an HG+ kid that you need to chart a very careful course between the just right amounts of intellectual stimulation (a lot), physical stimulation (tiring them out in stuff like organized kiddie sports seems to help some, made things worse for ours, who did best with playing outside in the air and light, but not in ways that tired him out) and social stimulation (in our experience, you rather need to keep that one down).
Also, careful orchestration of winding down time (no screen time after dinner, but rather bath time and cuddling, turning lights off, no looking at books together and discussing, but rather parent reads bedtime story from kindle and kid lies down in the dark, some parents have good results with soothing music. In short, turn down intellectual stimulation in time, too). Then, ours needed to be HELD. Confined, actually, against his will, smothered by motherly love, and he'd protest for about 30 seconds then was out like a light, something that might take two hours otherwise.
For us, fish oil, zinc and magnesium citrate supplements (200 mg in apple sauce, when they get diarrhea you know it's too much and can lower the dose) have worked very well, but YMMV. We also live Ina country where melatonin is not available over the counter or even by prescription for children, so never tried that one ourselves, but some swear by it.
Last edited by Tigerle; 01/19/16 12:16 AM.
