I had an issue with my DD and her bedtimes where she would spend hours awake before finally falling asleep. It never got as bad as 1am but I think it was heading there. We would go through the evening wind down routine and put her to bed and she would just stay awake, lying there, talking, singing, crying, calling out, getting up.... it would go on and on and the time she fell asleep was getting progressivly later. It did not matter what I did, nothing changed her night time sleeplessness and she was so overtired. I can't remember how old she was, maybe 2.8 or even around 3.
In the end what worked for me was following the advice from a sleep book which suggested resetting her sleep clock by following her rhythm for a bit to stop the battle, then bringing back her sleep time very slowly. For a few days, I let her stay up until 10.30 (that was the time she usually fell asleep after I put her to bed at 7). I then made sure I woke her at the usual time of 7.30 to keep that part of the routine locked in. I found that by putting her to bed then, she did go off to sleep pretty quickly as it seemed to be the tired window for her. After a few days of this, I brought back her bed time by 15 minutes, still getting her up at 7.30 in the morning. I kept going with this till I had her going to bed at 7pm and by this time, she would go to sleep at a pretty reasonable time, by at least half an hour after looking at a few books by herself.
This was a nice, natural, gently approach to retraining her sleep patterns and although it was pretty painful for the first few days to have a really overtired child running around the house in the evenings and then a very overtired child during the day, the system worked a treat.
Hope my experience helps? I went months with the crazy late bedtime and it was such a headache. All the best.
what exactly are you doing at bedtime? when does it begin? And what is she doing before you start bedtime?
Modelling sleep as barb suggests may be an idea too
Just a stab in the dark here, but I'd be having a close look at the food she is eating and possible side affects. Not just in terms of additives etc, I know grapes and tomatoes have something called solactytes (sp? I think thats what they're called) which can cause sleep issues in some kids. It could be worth doing some wide ranging research on foods that can affect sleep and then perhaps trying eliminating them from her diet.
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hun, that sounds like a nightmare!
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