Top 5 Reasons Your Child Won’t Sleep (and What to Do Tonight)
It’s 9:40pm, you’ve done the third glass of water and the second wee, and someone small is still very much awake. Most night-time resistance traces back to a short list of fixable causes, not a child who is simply ‘a bad sleeper’. Find yours in the five below and you’ll usually find tonight’s fix sitting right next to it.
- Overtired, not under-tired. A child who skipped the nap or crashed too late gets a second wind of stress hormones that make sleep harder, not easier. Tonight: move bedtime earlier, not later, and catch the first yawn instead of fighting past it.
- Screens too close to bed. Blue light and fast content switch the brain on right when you need it powering down. Tonight: kill screens an hour before bed and swap in something dull and dim — bath, books, low lights.
- An unpredictable wind-down. Brains fall asleep on cues, and a routine that changes nightly never builds them. Tonight: run the exact same short sequence in the same order, every night, until it’s automatic.
- The room’s working against you. Too warm, too bright, too loud. Tonight: cooler than feels right, properly dark, maybe a little white noise to blur the household.
- Connection running on empty. A child short on you all day will hunt for it hard at bedtime. Tonight: ten unhurried minutes of full attention before lights-out often settles the stalling faster than any sticker chart.
Pick the one that sounds most like your evenings and change just that, tonight. Sleep shifts take a few consistent nights to land, so hold the line gently and give it a week before you judge it. And on the rough nights — the teething, the bad dream, the 3am visitor — you haven’t failed. That’s just childhood, doing its thing.
Frequently asked questions
Roughly, toddlers land around eleven to fourteen hours counting naps, preschoolers a little less, and by primary school it's nine to twelve. Treat those as rough guides and hold them loosely. A well-rested kid wakes up reasonably cheerful and makes it to teatime without unravelling, which tells you more than any chart on the wall.
Sometimes, and the timing makes or breaks it. Drop it too soon and you end up with an overtired four-year-old fighting bedtime even harder. Most kids are ready somewhere between three and four. Quick test: if the nap keeps shoving bedtime later or hollowing out the night sleep, it's probably on its way out anyway.
Early waking usually traces to one of a couple of culprits, a bedtime that's actually too late so overtiredness backfires, or light sneaking through thin curtains. A blackout blind is the cheapest experiment going, so try that first. If they wake up genuinely happy and rested at five though, that might just be their body clock.
Honestly, this one belongs with your doctor rather than a blog post like this one. For most kids, changes to routine and wind-down come first, and melatonin only gets weighed up in particular situations, often where there's ADHD or autism in the mix, and always under medical guidance. Please book the GP chat before you buy anything.
KNOW FIRST.
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