If sleep were an animal, it would be placed on my family’s endangered species list.

Some nights, baby Orli gets up more than a newborn. Big sis Shira awakes terrified, screaming, at any hour. One morning last week, she padded out of her bed at 5:30 a.m. “Is it morning time?” she asked.

“No,” I lied as dawn’s light peeked through the skylight.

My son, Aviv, set the tone early on when, as a toddler, he announced before each naptime: “I don’t want to sleep or rest.”

What is it about kids that makes them recoil at the sight of their bed?

It’s as if “tired” is a bad word around our house.

Shira can’t stifle her yawns yet insists she’s not sleepy. But the instant she’s coaxed, er, forced, horizontal, she’s out.

I would say “out like a light,” but that’s not an apt description in her case. You see, nightlights are not sufficient. She demands her overhead light beam down upon her sleeping self. In and out of REM mode, she battles her twin fears: darkness and sleeping alone.

I get to sleep with her dad, she points out. Why doesn’t she get to sleep with anyone? I thrust stuffed animals at her, nestle beloved Faygan, a pink kitty cat, in her arms and explain she gets to sleep with her “kids.”

She’s not buying it.

“I want to sleep with a really real person,” she insists.

Ummm, what about your brother?

It would seem the perfect solution.

Only 5, he already has his own shark-sheeted queen bed that he inherited when our ersatz guest room transformed into a nursery.

Plenty of room for two kid bodies, but Aviv doesn’t like her middle-of-the-night shrieks any more than we do.

Not that he’s spending too much time asleep. As bedtime draws near, he manufactures a raft of excuses about why his bedroom isn’t conducive to ZZZZ’s. Room’s too quiet, so he opens the door to hear the clatter of dinner dishes being done. Bed’s too comfy, so he drags his sheets and pillow onto the floor and into the hallway. Rug harbors a dead dinosaur, he announces; he’s afraid. So I drew a dinosaur inside a circle and slashed through it diagonally in that universal symbol: No dead dinosaurs allowed.

Orli is the only one who consistently stays in her bed. She has no say in the matter, of course, since she’s confined to her crib. I don’t get those parents who are in such a rush to move a child into a big kid bed. After all, that’s when all the trouble really begins.

Not that issues haven’t already begun to crop up. Consider the phrase “sleeping like a baby.” On our recent vacation, our freshly minted 1-year-old managed to keep her big blue eyes open for more than nine hours before she finally succumbed to the Italian upholstery of the Plikomatic.

On vacation or at home, it is not unusual to be awakened four, five times a night.

I know I’m a wimp. These kids are ruling the roost.

Every morning when I awake bleary-eyed, I vow tonight will be different.

It never is.

It’s too hard to crack the whip when I can barely crack open my eyelids.

I know I just need to walk Shira back to her bed. But then she’ll cry. Scream, really. And then there will be a chain reaction, her screams eliciting wails from her sister across the hall and their brother next to him. And then I’ll be really be sorry.

Clearly, this somniphobia doesn’t last forever. By the teenage years and often earlier, it’s impossible to wake a kid up. (With that in mind, could someone tell me why middle and high school students start school up to an hour and 45 minutes earlier than elementary school kids?) Could someone please tell me when the metamorphosis occurs?

I’ve tried various lines of reasoning. Sleep is good, I tell them. Your bodies need it to stay healthy. Everyone sleeps, I continued – big kids, little kids, moms, dads, boys, girls, grandmas, grandpas, even Elmo.

I didn’t have proof of the latter; thankfully, none was requested.

Bonnie appears every Monday on TriangleMom2Mom.