I let my six-year-old kid stay up until 1 a.m. and sleep on the couch because it helps me be a better Mom

LACK OF SLEEP has long been a problem for stressed-out adults, but children are now suffering as well.

One mother, who allows her kid choose his bedtime — even on a school night — disagrees with another, who insists on lights out at 6 p.m.

HAYLEY AMBROSE lets Leyland, six, decide when he goes to bed — and sometimes leaves him sleeping on the couch all night. Hayley, a 34-year-old single admin assistant from Cambridge, says:

“I’ve ripped up the parenting rule book when it comes to sleep.”

It’s been like this since he was two years old, and some nights he’ll stay up with me until midnight — even on a school night.

On weekends, he frequently stays awake until 1 a.m., and he has also fallen asleep on the sofa, so I’ve left him there till the next morning.

When Leyland was a baby, I let him sleep whenever he pleased, and I knew when he was weary because he’d search for his dummy.

When he was eight months old, I returned to work, and he began nursery — but the workers there battled to get him to nap. He woke up in the middle of the night after taking a snooze.

Friends recommended that I put him to bed at 8 p.m. every night because the routine would help.

But as he became older and more self-sufficient, he began to oppose me. He’d always beg for a drink or run up and down the stairs as if it were a game.

Some nights, he’d lash out and yell at me that he wasn’t tired, and I quickly realised that no amount of sleep training or forced bedtimes would help.

I couldn’t face the hours of bedtime torture if I attempted to get him in bed by 7 p.m. If I tried, we’d both be fatigued the next day.

That’s when I started making my own sleep rules, much to the chagrin of my friends, who believed kids need routine. Allowing Leyland to decide when he is ready to sleep is part of growing up and understanding his own body.