A book can help with
For the child who is still going strong at half past nine.
Some children have no off switch. They are wide awake long after lights out, or up at five, or fighting sleep with everything they have because something more interesting might happen without them.
Books are already part of the answer, since a story is the signal that the day is closing. The ones here are chosen for their rhythm as much as their story, because a slow, repetitive book actually slows the reader’s voice, and a child settles to that.
Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there. The bedtime page covers fear of the dark.
Slowing right down
For the youngest, rhythm does more than plot. These are practically lullabies.
A small rabbit says goodnight to everything in the room, one thing at a time, in the same order every night. The repetition is the point, and it slows everybody down. Probably the most-used bedtime book ever written.
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Animal mothers settle their young in soft rhyming couplets that wind down page by page. Mem Fox writes for the ear, and it shows. Lovely as the very last book of the night.
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Settling a busy head
Now the trouble is often a mind that won’t stop rather than a body that won’t lie down.
A story built deliberately around slow, drowsy language and instructions for the reader to yawn and slow their voice. Opinions differ on whether it works, but plenty of families swear by it. Worth trying if bedtime has become a battle.
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Willa can’t sleep, so her brother helps her think of happy things to take into her dreams. It gives a child a bedtime habit of ending the day on something good, which is a useful thing to keep. Soft and calming.
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When the nights go wrong
Sleep trouble at this age is usually a busy head rather than a fear of the dark, and it feeds itself once a child starts dreading the bed. What follows gives them something to do rather than something to be told.
A workbook that teaches a child a few magic tricks and then uses them as the way into the habits that genuinely improve sleep: settling alone, quietening a busy brain, staying put. From Magination Press, with cognitive behavioural technique underneath the fun. Best worked through a chapter at a time rather than read straight.
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Short mindfulness exercises written for children, with audio to listen along to, several of them meant for lying in bed. The frog gives a child something to picture instead of an instruction to relax. Used widely in schools, and about as unmystical as this sort of thing gets.
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Why it matters more now
Sleep goes wrong around this age for reasons that are new: a body clock that genuinely shifts later, a phone within reach, and more to think about at eleven at night than there used to be. What follows explains the science rather than issuing instructions.
Morgan lays out what sleep actually does to a growing brain, why the teenage body clock shifts later of its own accord, and what screens do to the whole business. It is the science first and the advice second, which is the only order that works on somebody who has stopped taking instruction. Clear layout, easy to dip into.
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Something to do together
A picture chart for the wind-down routine, in the same order every night, so a child can see what comes next. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
Sleep specialists consistently recommend the same basics: a consistent bedtime, a predictable wind-down sequence, and screens off well before lights out, since screen light and stimulation both delay sleep.
So keep the routine the same rather than perfect, start the wind-down earlier than feels necessary, and keep the last twenty minutes calm and screen-free. If your child is persistently exhausted, snores heavily, or can never settle despite all this, it’s worth mentioning to your doctor.
And one for you rather than for them. If you have an older child who cannot get to sleep and will not put the phone down, Generation Sleepless by Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright is the book I’d point you at. It explains why a teenage body clock genuinely shifts later, why early school starts collide with that, and what a family can realistically change. Written for parents, not for children, so it is yours to read.
These pages are written for the grown-ups looking after a child: parents, teachers and carers. A good book can sit beside a worried child, though it never stands in for a real conversation, or for proper support when something feels too big to carry alone.