Insomnia in a child related to excessive time in bed

Above is a schematic representation of a child whose time in bed is 12 hours (set by her parents' expectations), which exceeds her intrinsic sleep requirement of 10 hours. As a result, the child has prolonged periods of wakefulness, which may manifest as bedtime resistance, night wakings, early morning awakening, or some combination of all three. The solution to this problem is to reduce the "sleep window" to match sleep needs (in this case, 10 hours), typically by delaying bedtime and/or advancing wake time. This can be done incrementally (eg, delaying bedtime by 15 minutes every few nights until the target sleep window is achieved).