I use to cry myself to sleep every Christmas and birthday night .. now my ds (age 9) is doing it.

We try to keep it simple but we both come from large extended families and the kids are overwhelmed and exhausted.

Anyone else dealing with overwhelmed out of sorts kids?

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We had the reverse but similar thing happen. Dd (age 8) got up at 3:30 am and was too excited to fall asleep again. She kept coming into our room every 20 minutes or so, saying, "I can't sleep!" or "Can we go see if Santa was here?" So, neither dh nor I got any more sleep after that. By mid-afternoon, she was still going strong and I was ready to collapse. Today she's a wreck... naughty, irritable, grumpy.... ugh.

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Our 4 year old did the same thing. She was up at 4 and couldn't go back to sleep. I was able to get her to take a nap at 10am yesterday. She is in bed now because she had a fever and vomitting at 3:45am.

As far as the crying at bedtime, I've never experienced that at Christmas/Birthday but I have been overstimulated or had anxiety and cried myself to sleep. Is there anyway you could simplify the celebrations? My nlaws beg us to do a 5 hour roundtrip drive on Christmas day. This drive isn't to their house (they live 10 minutes away). It is to visit an Aunt who has about 50 people at her house for Christmas. The kids are screaming and it is so loud in there you can think. We took our oldest when she was 2 and she was terrified. She didn't get a nap and it was a mess. For birthdays, we only invite grandparents and 1 or 2 friends. I'm not saying you are doing anything wrong... I'm just wondering if you can simplify. No one in our family seems to get offended. You may have to deal with relatives that expect to see you or expect to be invited. Sorry to hear she had such a hard time