Bedtime in our house used to take an hour and a half. Now it takes twenty minutes.

Bedtime in our house used to take an hour and a half.

My son is nine. He has — and I'm just going to use the word other parents use — a "spirited" nervous system. He feels everything bigger. The day winds him up, the night winds him up more. By the time we got to lights-out, both of us were in tears more often than I want to admit.

What we tried.

We tried everything. Weighted blanket. White noise machine. Lavender pillow spray. The bedtime routine the parenting books promise. The bedtime routine the OT recommended. We tried earlier bedtimes, later bedtimes, no screens after 5pm, melatonin (briefly, did not love how it made him feel in the morning), magnesium gummies, calming tea, breathing exercises, the works.

Some of those things helped a little. None of them changed the bedtime war.

By August I was putting myself to bed at the same time as him because I had nothing left in the tank for an evening that was supposed to be mine. I had stopped seeing friends. I had started dreading sundown the way some people dread Mondays. It was the most stressful part of every day.

The friend who told me what she'd put on her own bed.

About four months ago a friend told me about something she had put on her own bed that had calmed her own nervous system. I asked her, half-joking, whether she thought it would do anything for a child. She said she didn't know, but that it cost nothing to try because of the 90-night money-back trial.

I bought one. It is a stainless-steel grounding sheet from a small Australian company called Premium Grounding. I put it on my son's bed under his fitted sheet. It is a charcoal-grey sheet woven with surgical stainless-steel thread, with a thin cord that plugs into the earth pin of the wall socket. No electricity. No batteries. It just connects his body to the Earth's natural electrical charge while he sleeps, the way every body on Earth was designed to be when we all walked barefoot.

I told him it was a special sheet a friend had recommended. He was nine, so this was a sufficient explanation.

What changed.

I will be careful and honest about what happened, because I know how much these stories sometimes get oversold.

Week one: bedtime took 45 minutes instead of 90.

Week two: 30 minutes.

By week four, I was reading him one chapter and saying goodnight, and most nights he was asleep within twenty minutes. He stopped waking up at 2am wanting to come into our bed. His morning meltdowns went from daily to about once a week.

I am not telling you this is a fix. I am not telling you it will work for your child. I am telling you that for us, it changed the most stressful part of the day.

For the parents reading this at 11pm.

I know exactly who is reading this. You are the mother (or father, but mostly mother) of a child whose body has never quite known how to settle. You have read every book. You have done every routine. You have asked every paediatrician, every OT, every well-meaning relative who thinks they know.

I am not going to tell you what your child has. I do not know your child. I am telling you that the underlying physical thing — a nervous system that doesn't switch off at night — is something that responds, in many children, to a very simple physical reset. The sheet is the cheapest thing I have ever bought him. It does not require behaviour change. It does not require a routine. It does not require him to do anything except go to bed, which he was going to do anyway.

If your evenings are like ours used to be, try a stainless-steel grounding sheet. Premium Grounding backs theirs with a 90-night money-back trial and free worldwide shipping. If it doesn't change anything, send it back. No questions.

And whether or not it works — I see you.