I'm not tired

My miss three doesn't day sleep as a rule. We encourage/enforce quiet time and this is 30 mins to an hour after lunch. We're putting her to bed around 7:30/8ish and she wakes between 6 - 7am.

Lately, we've been having trouble with "I'm not tired." She's a massive procrastinator - she goes to the toilet, asks for water, asks for the light to be on, undresses herself etc. If she is tired, she just goes straight to bed without dramas. She's always been a good sleeper and i genuinely believe she isn't tired. It's actually worse on kindy days as I think she does rest/lightly sleep there for an hour or so. She goes to bed without complaint and even tells us "you can go and do your jobs now" but just lies there singing or talking and after a while starts kicking the wall and then she's up and out of bed. If we tell her to stay in bed she cries until we go in and then she tells us she's hot/thirsty/bored/not tired blah blah.

DH and I have been wondering if we should just let her stay up or give her books to read in bed? DH isn't a huge fan of either.

Any ideas/suggestions/thoughts?

We let DS1 read books in bed when he's "not tired". He knows he has to have quiet time, curtains are still drawn, soft music is still played, but yes, he can read quietly in bed.

As often as not, he falls asleep while doing so. ;)

Do you have a night light in DD room?
My DS2 often says he is not tired when I put him to bed. When I go up later, he has put on the dimmable light and has fallen asleep. I figured he may be afraid of the dark?

I would definitely give her the option to read quietly in bed if she's not tired. So it's either that, or bed, no getting up to play or watch tv etc. I used to have lots of trouble falling asleep and reading more than not put me out.

I do relaxation exercises with Charlotte. She closes her eyes, I stroke her head and we concentrate on breathing, relaxing and calming her body, from her toes to the top of her head. Monotone stuff, each breath out, a part of your body relaxes further, becomes lighter and calmer....
9/10 the "I'm not tired" 5 year old is asleep before I get to her shoulders.

If she really isn't tired, we sometimes find actual physical exertion helps - we used to have a large island bench, and exH would chase her around the bench, she thought it was all hilarious, but after 20 minutes, she would be zonked. See how many lap-lengths of the house she could do, star jumps... then do the bedtime routine, and she would be out to it.

Do you read to hear at bedtime? Both of mine will fall asleep if I sit there long enough - about 30 mins of reading a non-picture book works well.

I have some relaxation tracks from Christiane Kerr for on ipod - I think I heard about them on here (they work well with four year old and she loves them but no difference with two year old). They are about floating in sea, in space, snow etc.

I have a stay-upperer too. We let her have a dim lamp on (warm coloured bulb only as the daylight colour ones have too much blue light that promotes wakefulness). She is allowed to read or even play quietly but she has to stay in bed. For Christmas one year we bought her a little stereo, and we rotate through audio books. There are some great ones that are collections of short kids stories (like men fox, Aussie nibbles, etc) and we are constantly finding good ones at the library too. She is happy enough to lie there and listen to a few stories or even look at pictures in her books.

Our other trick is that 6 o'clock is sit down o'clock meaning all activities after that time need to be sedentary. It helps get her more settled before bed.