We have a 6 year old daughter who has been doing this for at least 2 years. She sneaks around at night. Last night we caught her up at 2:30am in the living room sneaking around. We've also caught her in her brother's room in the middle of the night. We've caught her looking into our bedroom door, which ends up scaring me half to death. Sometimes, she'll wait till we go to bed and start sneaking around. My problem is that i've run out of ideas to keep her in bed. I don't know what else to do. We've tried grounding, taking things away, and even harsher, the swat on the butt. We've put a night light up in her room, we leave her door open... It doesn't work, we end up catching her again a few days later. Also, what about her need of sleep? We also notice she's up way before us in the mornings. I go to work around 6am, she's up. My 3 year old son has now started coming in our room very early in the mornings and we think it has to do with our daughter waking him up. Please any ideas?

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Apologies if this sounds harsh - you have let it go on for 2 years, it is going to be tough to get her our of this habit.
First thing I would do is shut her door, and also put some sort of gate accross it, like a stair gate that she can't open.
You also have to be really strict, and whenever she gets up, take her straight back to bed, withou talking to her, except to say, its night time, time for bed. Don't get into any arguments, or conversations, it is her way of delaying. Make sure all the other doors are closed. Maybe even put bolts on the downstairs doors out of her reach so she can't open them.
Try a reward chart. For every night she stays in her room (even if she wakes up), she gets a tick or a star. For every time she is out of her room, she gets a cross. At the end of the week if she has all stars, or way more stars then crosses she gets a treat whether it is a new toy or book, a trip to the cinema, special outing with parents etc. Also try not letting her do things like going out to play with friends "because she is too tired" from not sleeping at night.
Ask her if there is anything in her room she doesn't like, or something (within reason) that you could do to make her happier there.
Good luck.

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Give her her own alarm clock and set it for 6:00am and tell her if she wakes up before the alarm goes off she can not come out of her room until it goes off. I would try and figure out why she is not sleeping sound. Is it noise from the streets, the neighbors etc. Is it nightmares that are waking her up, is she hungry or has to go to the bathroom etc.

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