During the school year, DD9 goes to bed at 8:30 during the week, and I get her up at 6:00. She is very difficult to get out of bed. (She gets to stay up until 9:00 on weekends.) I think she's right on the edge of not getting enough sleep, judging by behavior, but she's often getting up and asking for stuff for an hour or more after bedtime.

DD5 is starting kindergarten tomorrow. He goes to bed at 8:00, and now he will have to get up at 6:00, too. We would think about moving his bedtime earlier, but it will be tough to fit in after work. He's easier to wake up than DD, so I think he's getting a reasonable amount of sleep now.

DD14 now goes to bed at 9:30 and I wake her at 5:50 AM.

I'd say that this is "adequate" sleep for her-- it is as much sleep as she's ever gotten, truthfully. At 8-10, she would go to bed between 10 and 11 and get up about 7. She's never been what I'd call a morning person, though, and no amount of sleep allows her to just "pop" out of bed and rapidly become alert. She has also always been slow to go to sleep and has suffered from insomnia, which may have a genetic component in her case.

We have circumvented this problem (well, both problems, really) by having her put vigorous exercise FIRST thing in her day. I get her up so that she has the time to do it. But this way she has some down-time to wake up completely, and she also gets the exercise into her day in a way that doesn't interfere with her sleep cycle. The most current evidence re: insomnia and exercise says that YES, it helps significantly... once you've been at it regularly for months. No quick fix, unfortunately. It has to be a lifestyle thing.

We've also found that it is SUPER important for her to keep to more-or-less the same schedule day in and day out. Moving bedtime even an hour really messes things up.

Our kids, 2 and 5, usually go to bed between 8-9 and wake up on their own between 7-8. DS2 also has a nap at daycare.

DS22mo sleeps from about 9-9:30pm to somewhere around 8:00-9:00am (with many wakings) then usually naps about 2ish hours in the afternoon, often starting around noon to 1:00pm. We keep the same approximate rhythm everyday. As you can tell from my "around" and "ish" qualifiers, this routine is based on natural sleep and wake cycles.

DS5 on a good day / night sleeps about 9hrs (with help of Melatonin and Hydroxyzine). When he was younger before Melatonin started working on him, he was running on 4hrs of sleep / day. It was exhausting to say the least! DS3 either gets 7hrs in one stretch (usually from 2am - 9am), or sleeps in two long naps (8pm-midnight and 7am-11am) ... and from time to time dozes off in the car or doesn't sleep at all.

Ds6 goes to bed at 7 and is asleep by 7.30 often sooner - he gets up between 6 and 6.45. Ds4 goes to bed at 7 and goes to sleep somewhere between then and 8.30. He wakes any time between 6.30 and 7.30 during the week though I let them sleep later in the weekends. Bedtime is the same every day though I don't stress if it slips to 7.30 or so on Fridays and Saturdays. Ds6 had an afternoon sleep regularly until 3.5 and occasionally until 4.5, ds4 stopped at 2.

As a working single mum I need the evenings to clean, have me time and do book work. Ds6 has a bio clock that suits this, ds4 not so much but he is happy to colour or read and play in bed for a while.

DD9 (my high sleep needs kid) goes to bed at 8:15 or 8:30 and is up at 6:35 for school. This is barely enough sleep for her and we have to wake her. She will sleep in till 7:30 or 8 on weekends if her brother does not wake her.

DS5 (lower sleep needs) goes to bed at 7:30 or 7:45 and is also up at 6:35. He wakes on his own and never sleeps in on weekends. He has been having trouble falling asleep for a while. We let him read in bed before lights out and I think it's actually too stimulating, but now that we've started this I think he would kill us if we took it away. I think he also needs more sleep, but am not as sure.

DD would benefit from going to bed at 8, but with a 4-year age gap she needs to feel like she gets to go to bed later than her brother.

I find that DS5 goes to sleep more quickly if he gets to bed earlier and pops up and out more when bedtime is too late.

ElizabethN, I didn't realize we have the same age spread with our kids. One thing I had forgotten is how tired they are after kindy (my son is in full-day). He normally does not say he is tired, but has been complaining of fatigue since school started and comes home pretty spent. I totally get it being hard to move bedtime earlier, but you might consider it for a bit at the start of school.

It used to be worse... but my DS6 currently goes to bed 10/11pm and wakes at 7am. He is not a sleeper. Never has been. I, on the other hand, have high sleep needs and have found myself regularly working at a deficit since becoming his mother. He gave up all naps at 18 months and considers the terms "sleep" and "nap" anathema.

I didn't either!

Thanks for the heads up on fatigue. Now that they'll both be on the school bus at 7:30, I may be able to shift my work hours earlier so I can afford to move bedtime earlier. We may take a week to see how it goes first, though.

I have pretty high sleep needs - DH, not so much. My brother also gets by on shockingly little sleep. So the kids could have genes for pretty much anything.

Our DS (6.5) bedtime when school starts next week is from 8-6. We find that it take at least a half hour for him to fall asleep after we close the door.

This vacation, his bedtime has ranged from 8:30-10 and he's usually up around 6:15-7:30, depending upon when he went down, and depending upon if he has woken up during the night. (He's had nightmares lately.)

I've noticed that he's optimum with at least 9 hours a night.

Side note: Our son's first grade is from 8:30-2. The director of the charter said that they have learned that youngsters generally don't concentrate very well if expected to be in school past that time.

Contrasting this with last year at the public school in which DS was first enrolled...Kindergarten from 8-2:45.

I really wonder if these little ones, gifted or otherwise, just need more "downtime"? I call for a Siesta!

It was my husband's and my observation that our DS was tired enough coming home from a short day Kindergarten at the private school we moved him into (8-11:45). He bounced back after a few hours relaxing at home, however.

DS10 and DD7 are both theoretically supposed to go to bed at 9:00 pm and get up at 6:45 am on school days. DD7 is generally asleep by 9:30, although some nights she is getting up for things (growing pains, drink of water, hungry, forgot to tell me something, etc.) until 10-10:30. This gets better as the school year becomes a habit. DS10 is a night owl like his mother, and I'm lucky if he's asleep by 10:30. Any day when he doesn't have to get up early, he's up till midnight, 1 am, just like me.

Like HK said, no amount of sleep ever gets either one of us to the ability to bounce out of bed happily. Ever. DD7 is an early-morning bouncer, and she naturally falls asleep earlier, too.

DS6 is our sleeper. He goes up about 8, reads until 9 and sleeps until 7:30 or 8. (We don't leave for school until 8:30, so this works for us.)

DD4, starting K, does best with 11 - 12 hours. In bed at 7, out by 7:05 and up around 6:45. She needs more sleep than she likes to get. And like someone else's little one, if she's in bed on time she falls asleep no prob, but if she goes up 20 min late she might come down for the next 60 - 90 min, driving me crazy, since I know she'll be a wreck the next day. With her starting all day K, I'm sure she'll be worn out like her brother was and plan to have her up to bed a few minutes earlier... Which does rush the evening dinner/bath/bed routine.

Our youngest (3) is on a similar schedule to her sister.

Mk13 -- I do not know how you are doing it!

DD6 goes to sleep around 8.15-8.30, and wakes 6.30-6.45. She'll always wake at that time no matter how late she's up, and will stay happy and bright unless she goes 3 or so days with less sleep. FWIW she was never tired out when she started school unlike all her friends, she was energized by it

I think this is more common that people realize. There is the temptation to assume this means the kid is not sleepy, but it's like with babies, when you miss the nap window (ohhhh, how I HATED that).

Interestingly we don't see this with my higher sleep needs kid (she is mostly OUT a few minutes after her light is out), just the one who is more able to "get by" on less sleep.

I do feel grateful that both of my kids are happy morning people--chipper and alert as soon as they're up (unlike their mother!!) However, they do not sleep in if up very late.

ah, yet another creepy ditto, for me, AvoCado. sometimes i honestly think we're raising the same kid. although the "energized" thing only lasted until "disillusioned" took over...

My 2-year-old daughter usually goes to sleep between 9:30 to 10 in the evening this is because she gets more than an hour of sleep in the afternoon. I have to make her sleepy so she can sleep straight. She wakes up between 9 to 9:30 in the morning.

MK, have you ever tried a zinc and magnesium supplement for your DS5? I used to get considerable nervous overload from my weightlifting and found this combination beneficial for calming my CNS if taken a few hours prior to bedtime. Otherwise, I'd settle after 1:00am and be up repeatedly through the night.

Thanks for the tip! Never tried that so will check into it!

ultramarina, funny that you said "nap window", as just this evening I put DD3 down 30 min later, since she'd taken a nap today (unusual for her.)

She sang to herself and read books in her room for the next hour and DH kept remarking that we'd "missed the window." SO true for all three of ours! With DS, I actually worried about all the sleep he seemed to need. Our ped had to reassure me that as he was more than hitting his milestones I shouldn't be at all worried. (He was still sleeping 15-16 hours at 2.)

Ours did the same - he was still taking 3-4 hour naps at home when he was 4! (Daycare didn't let him sleep that long, so he may have been "catching up" to some extent on weekends.)

My ds6 sleeps 8pm (bedtime 7:30) to 6:45-7 for school. He is not happy to be woken. He would rather stay up till 8:30 and sleep till 8:30-9am. He still nap 1x/week. Ds3 sleeps 7:45-6:30ish (sometimes earlier wake up). Naps 2-4 most days, but can skip occasionally.

Luckily sleep is one issue we don't have in our house!

ds6 was capable of sleeping until 4.30, gettin up for a bath and tea then going back to bed at 6.30. It was amazing. Ds4 would sleep 10 mins in the car and be awake until 10.30 pm.

Sleep is such an individual thing - my kids all have very different sleep needs. My oldest never slept much *ever* - gave up his naps very early, routinely stayed wide awake until after 10:30 pm, and yet was popping out of bed wide-eyed alert and ready to tackle the day at 5:30 am sharp (long before his sleepy parents were ready to get up!)... and that went on for years. He's mellowed a bit with age - now goes to be somewhere between 9:30 and 10:30 most nights, and wakes up like clockwork (but without need of an alarm) every day somewhere between 6:15 and 6:30 - wide awake, not tired at all.

My dd11, otoh, took an afternoon nap up through 4 years old, and always fell asleep at 8 pm at night no matter whether or not she was in bed, and that was it - she was asleep until morning, and even then it was tough to wake her up before 8 am. She stays up to 8:30 now and is still difficult to wake up in the morning. My youngest dd is somewhere in between the other two, but is the toughest to get out of bed in the morning - whether or not she slept 5 hours or 15 hours - she's just not a morning person.

One thing to consider if you feel your child is just on the verge of needing more sleep and you don't want to move up a bedtime (which I totally understand - the hours at the end of our days seem so limited and rushed!) - is there any possibility you could let them sleep in a 1/2 hour longer in the morning? We try to get everything ready at our house the night before, and that way our dds don't have to get up extra-early. I like having the extra time (awake) with them at night much more than in the morning - morning's always seem to be rushed whether or not the kids are up 30 minutes before we leave or 2 hours before we leave... possibly because *I'm* not a morning person lol

Best wishes,

polarbear

On weekdays, DD8 begins her bedtime routine at 9:30pm, with lights-out usually around 10:00pm (DW and I don't regulate, as we do not possess the power over space and time to control when DD is ready to sleep), and gets up at 7:30am. We've been noticing behavior that signals sleep deprivation issues in the last week or so, so we've implemented some nighttime routine changes to get her in bed quicker, and the next step will be a move to 9:00pm if that doesn't yield satisfactory results.

On weekends, she gets to stay up to 10:30pm, and gets up whenever she likes... usually 8:30-ish.

When the girls were younger we had a strict 8:00pm bedtime. Now they are old enough to be involved in activities and sports that sometimes run late, so we shoot for 8:00-8:30pm when we can. They get up at 6:40am to get ready for school. We sometimes let them stay up later on weekends, but not always.

There are times they are still awake at 10:30-11:00pm, just laying in bed, singing, playing, or talking to themselves or their stuffed animals. Most nights they are out within 30 minutes of going to bed.

They used to get up many times to ask questions, get a drink, complain about an ache/pain that just mysteriously appeared after they got into bed, etc. They have outgrown that or we finally got through to them to stop getting out of bed - thank goodness!

Both girls can and will sleep in on the weekends if we let them, but then they will want to stay up later on those nights. DD9 can sleep in until 10:30-11:00am, whereas DD7 may sleep in until 9:00-9:30am at the latest. I was a big sleeper when I was a pre-teen/teenager and could easily sleep in until noon if allowed to. I always said I was making up for the little sleep I got when I was a baby/toddler, since my parents told me I didn't ever sleep more than 30 minutes at a time until I started Kindergarten.

Both girls gave up naps about the time they turned 3-4 years old and it didn't really seem to bother their temperaments at all. It was actually much worse on them and us trying to get them to take a nap or at least lay down and rest, than it was to just give up the naps!

I would love it if we could do that, but the bus picks them up before 7:30 for an 8:00 school start. Right now their alarms are set for 6:10, and it is definitely a push to get them ready to get out the door by 7:15 to catch the bus. DD9 takes a really long time to eat breakfast, because she has an oral appliance that is hard to "eat around," and DS5 is just goofy and difficult in the morning. I probably spent 30 min just coaxing him to go to the bathroom and get dressed today. We did a dry run yesterday, and they "won" a trip to the movies yesterday afternoon by being ready to go on time in the morning. DS was really cranky in the afternoon, though, which doesn't bode well for today. We'll see what the report is at the end of the day.

My kids are both difficult in the mornings, too, as far as getting them focused and getting things done. DD is usually awake and cheerful, but then she wants to play, and talk, and pet the dog, etc., and I literally have to shepherd her from one task to the next. DS is everything but awake and cheerful, so I (again, literally) have to drag him out of bed and walk him through everything. We have backpacks ready the night before, so all they have to do is eat and brush teeth and hair, DD gets dressed, and, stupid as this sounds, I generally put DS(10!)'s shoes on his feet while he's eating because it's just too time-consuming to get him to do it. Helicopter shoe mom, that's me.

This morning, moments before the bus came into sight, DS had to run back to the house to use the bathroom because his tummy was upset. So DH had to run him to school and he ended up with his second tardy in two weeks.