Taken from Nighttime Parenting: How to Get Your Baby and Child to Sleep by William Sears
Sleep maturity tends to take longer to develop in high needs children. These children are very sensitive to environmental stimuli by day and carry this sensitivity into their sleep patterns at night. Parents of a high need child will often describe him as “exhausting but bright.â€
These children seem to be constantly awake and aware, by day and by night, as though they posses an internal light bulb that is always on. Their inner radar system is always tuned in and processing the stimuli around them. One of the problems is that these children never want to turn the light off or the radar down. They do not easily detach themselves from the delights of their environment. They do not give up easily and are therefore very difficult to get to sleep.
A seven bedtime is usually an unrealistic expectation for these children. Some sleep researchers feel that it is the ability to stay awake that reflects the maturation of the brain, rather than the ability to go to sleep through the night.
