BY MIDNIGHT, us old folks were ready to crash in bed. But a two-year-old monkey-boy named Julian was still jumping on our bed like a hamster on steroids.
"Let's go into the hole," Julian whispers conspiratorially to my husband, pointing to a small gap between the bed and the wall. The Supportive Spouse feigns sleep.
"Read, please! Read, PLEASE!" Julian chants, thrusting one of his books at me as I bury my head in a pillow.
Some nights, he giggles maniacally at nothing in particular, prattles on in gibberish, and boxes with his shadow.
And so it goes, until the little guy runs out of steam and collapses between us, limbs everywhere, into Dreamland an hour or two later.
Recently, a published study by the Asia-Pacific Paediatric Sleep Alliance revealed that Singapore children get less sleep than their Western peers.
It found that the average Singaporean tyke goes to bed at 9.45pm, compared to 8.30pm in the West. What would the researchers have made of Julian's 1am bedtime? I shudder to imagine.
The issue of sleep - when, where and how much - tends to be a tricky one for most parents.
Bed- and nap-times are like magical formulae that need to be recalculated every few months, even weeks. Those who have infants obsess over the day when their babies learn to "sleep through the night" - a relative concept that just means that they don't wake up every two hours to be fed.
A child can turn from a well-rested angel into a sleep-deprived mini-ogre overnight. One exasperated Mum friend of mine posted her young daughter's tear-stained sleeping face on her blog, requesting tips on what to do with the sleep-resisting girl.
I am partly to blame for Julian's late nights. He bunks in with us; a fact that the recent study says correlates to later bedtimes. Some nights, I share my dessert with him, knowing full well that there'll be a sugar high to contend with later.
And with a TV set in our bedroom, there's the sleep-delaying distraction of cartoons, and passive television viewing to boot. In 2006, a Finnish study showed that passive viewing of adult-targeted programmes, like the news, police series and movies, contributed to children's sleeping difficulties.
The obvious aside, there can be a million reasons why a child suddenly develops an aversion to sleep.
As a ghost-fearing kid, I made up all sorts of excuses to stay up with my parents, who simply found me a hyperactive nuisance. Bad sleeping habits, too, tend to carry over into adulthood, causing problems later in life.
A brainy ex-classmate of mine told me how she never learnt the concept of a regular bedtime, and now retires for the day only when fatigue overtakes her.
Then again, life for sleepless young minds is so full of discoveries that they are loathe to switch off its mysteries. And that's a good thing that shouldn't be stamped out by inflexibility about shut-eye.
While it'd be nice if Julian went to bed without a fuss, I'm not too worried about my night owl of a son.
After all, he gets enough sleep and wakes up at the lazy hour of 11am - allowing me to sleep in. Morning-session school is still a few years away. I'll panic later.
