how do you get your 9yr child to go to sleep early for school, to be ready for school?

You must have a set schedule that you stick with all the time. About an hour before bedtime, remind him that bedtime is in an hour. You might try a bedtime routine, like reading a chapter out of a book every night after he has brushed his teeth and got into bed. Sticking with a routine subconsciously prepares a person for sleep.

The best way is to start establishing an early pattern of waking and sleeping. It helps to at least disengage all forms of distraction at least a half hour before bedtime. Avoid too much sugar and drinks with caffeine that could keep them up.

The half-hour before can be used to brush teeth, bathe or shower quickly (unless that is usually done as a morning ritual), set clothes out for the next day, make sure all the items to bring to school are in order, etc.

If they have fears of the dark, provide a night-light for security and/or leave a hall light on with their door open a bit.

Prior to bedtime preparation, make sure they have a full meal and perhaps schedule some family activities to tire them out.

Cyberspace ate my first answer, so here goes another try.

Even with a regular sleep schedule, two of my four children and my husband have a hard time getting to sleep and staying asleep. The other two and myself are typically sound asleep within ten minutes and will stay asleep until morning. During times where it becomes a problem for our night owls to feel rested enough during the day yet they still cannot sleep at night, we use foods or sometimes even supplements to work with the body's own chemistry to help them catch up on sleep and be alert during the day.

To go to sleep at night the brain makes a hormone called melatonin to begin the sleep cycle. Melatonin production is generally triggered by darkness and the body's circadian rhythm. For some people, their brains need a bit of help to make enough to get off to sleep. One remedy is to get tryptophan, which is a chemical precursor to melatonin, and melatonin into the body through eating foods high it them shortly before bedtime. Foods high in tryptophan are milk and turkey. Foods high in melatonin are bananas and oats. You can also buy melatonin supplements at health food stores and WalMart. I recommend the low dosage chewables for children. Before these came out, our first try using a 3mg per tablet supplement showed us that it was too strong for my 11 and 15 year old. They both felt desperately sleepy before bed and felt groggy for a few hours after waking. Half of the 3mg tablet was just right though. They fell asleep in about 10 minutes and woke up without grogginess the next morning after an uninterupted night's sleep. I really feel uncomfortable with the idea of using the commercial supplement nightly. We only use these in the more severe stretches of insomnia. These are the stretches where you feel absolutely exhausted both day and night, yet still can not sleep.

Getting to sleep is only half of the task. You also want to assist the body and mind in perking up and being alert in the morning. My husband and daughter have a condition known as celiac. Because of the condition they have a very hard time having enough vitamin B12. One thing that they noticed is that after taking their B12 supplement (sublingual form) they felt very alert. Several friends of ours who went to the doctor because they felt fatigued all the time found out from bloodwork done that they had low levels of B12. After starting to supplement they too found that it was very effective for mental alertness and energy. I was curious and with a bit of research discovered why. One of B12's primary functions is to cause energy release from cells. To use this information to help your family start their day, make sure that you either supplement B12 or select foods high in B12 for breakfast. Foods high in B12 are the animal protien foods - beef, chicken, eggs, milk products.

Notice that milk is both a good source of tryptophan (helps with sleep) and a good source for B12 (helps with alertness). Experiment with it to see which way milk affects your child more. For us, it has been an excellent sleep help.

Cut all sugars. Pop, candies, cakes, ect. after 6:p.m. Sometimes a warm bath with exhaust a child enough to rest better.

You just mix a little apple brandy in their apple juice, bout an hour before you want results. If this doesn't work, try a nice sedative like seroquel, or some xanax.

You can try simply putting them on a nightly schedule. Eventually they will fall to sleep at a certain regardless of what day it is.

style of. possibly wake them up, tell them to dress and get their issues at the same time, and be contained in the kitchen for breakfast in approximately 10 minutes. Then make some thing rapid for breakfast, like cereal or a poptart, and enable them to consume. tell them whilst they ought to flow away, and enable them to be. in the event that they take a protracted time, in simple terms remind them. they ought to have the means to get out of the living house with minimum nudging.

ditto to Shojo...make a schedule. stick to it. you are the adult, not the buddy....no matter what the current child-rearing books say, you have to establish who is the boss. YOU are. depending on how you've gone along until now, you have to take some control.

I don't allow my 10 year old to have sugar or caffeine after 5PM. Her bedtime is 9 PM firm, and she must be up by 6AM.

set a schedule and then do not vary i repeat do not vary. if 9 is bed time then 9 is bed time.... you can count down like say it's an hour till bed time, its 30 minutes till bedtime... so on and so forth.. you have to be solid about it.