Try reading Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. It's a fairly easy read (I know from experience how important that is when you are going on no sleep). The most important thing that I learned from it is that when child (or adult) is over tired the body actually produces chemicals to help keep the body moving. The chemicals then make it much harder for you to fall asleep, so it becomes a vicious cycle of over tired yet not able to sleep. The trick is in finding out how to stop the cycle. I originally bought the book to help get my baby in a good sleep cycle, but soon realized that it also applied to my 3 year old. We had been fighting to continue naps because she was so over tired without them, but it took forever to get her to nap, forever to get her to sleep at night, she woke several times in the night and was always awake before 7 in the morning. After reading the book, we dropped the nap, moved her bedtime to 6:30 and it was like a miracle! Within a few days she was going to sleep within 15 minutes, sleeping through the night and waking at her normal time. It has made life so much easier for the whole family. Hope you are able to find an easy fix as well.