Dear Jan: My wife and I have been locked in a power struggle with our 11-year-old son. It centers on his unwillingness to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. During the last school year, we appealed with logic, then insisted on a specific "lights out" time as he is a voracious reader, and finally resorted to revoking privileges. Nothing we tried worked. In the morning it was extremely tough to get him out of bed; he usually arrived at school tired, and consequently his academic performance suffered.

During the summer, we loosened up on his "lights out" time. With school starting soon, we would welcome any advice.

— A dad

Dear Dad: It's important to keep in mind that three forces are at work with your child:

1. The need to interact with his parents.

2. The need to manage himself and be under his own power and control.

3. The need to follow a routine.

With your current approach to bed and sleep, your child is satisfying all these needs in a negative way. As you plead with him to fall asleep, he is interacting with you before bed negatively. He's proving that he alone holds the power regarding when he falls to sleep. Plus, his bedtime routine involves negative elements which includes you coaxing and coercing him to go to bed.

Your job is to change the negative forces at work into positive ones.

Start by telling your child that when school starts he will be required to be in his bedroom by 9 p.m. Tell him, however, that when he actually climbs in bed, shuts his eyes and falls asleep is completely up to him.

You must accept that getting him to fall asleep is not in your control. It will serve you and him best if you acknowledge this fact.

You're absolutely right that he needs to fall asleep earlier, and by dropping out of the power struggle you give him the opportunity to discover this truth on his own.

The bigger challenge for you will be to get him into his bedroom by 9 p.m. To do so, ask him how the 8:30-to-9 p.m. half hour should go. While he must put on pajamas and brush his teeth, he can also choose to eat a snack, play a game, read or watch a lighthearted TV program.

Whichever of these activities he chooses, participate with him in a positive way. Doing so satisfies the need to interact with his parents while creating a positive bedtime routine.

To guide him through this newly created routine, use simple word prompts such as "snack time" or "pajamas." Such prompts keep the child on track until the routine becomes automatic.

Also, get him an alarm clock and determine with him exactly what he needs to do in the morning.

Create with your child a list of steps for the new morning routine. These will include using the bathroom, brushing teeth, eating breakfast, getting dressed, and locating his backpack, lunch and coat for getting out the door on time.

Use simple word prompts again.

Also, find a way to briefly and positively interact with your son in the morning. Read him an article of interest from the newspaper, watch a segment of a morning news program together and discuss it, or talk about the events of the day to come.

During the first three weeks of the new school year when you're getting this new routine under way, you'll need to stay focused on how you're managing yourself. When you change, then your son will be free to learn to manage his own going-to-bed and waking-up routine.

Let him alone to learn to manage when he actually falls asleep. If you don't, you'll be fighting the same battle to no avail through middle school and high school.

Jan Faull, a specialist in child development and behavior, answers questions of general interest in her column. You can e-mail her at janfaull@aol.com or write to: Jan Faull, c/o Families, The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists