How do I make my iphone silent except for selected contacts when I am sleeping

Thankfully, Apple added the new Do Not Disturb Feature in iOS6. Once set up you can add any number of contacts to a specific group and only allow those contacts to contact you after the Do Not Disturb feature is turned on.

You can schedule & set it up under: Settings>Notification>Do Not Disturb

You can use the "do not disturb" the only way for certain people to get through your phone is by going through your contacts, click on their name, look for add to favorites. Also make sure you go into setting>notifications>do not disturb>allow calls from favorites. So now whoever you put in your favorites will be able to get through your phone and alert you while people that are not in your favorites can't. You will get a alert from the non favorites but it will just be silent.

There is a fairly simple workaround. You need to have a ringtone that is just silence. You can download or make one. Assign a custom ringtone (that is not the silence) to the contacts you want to be able to get at any time. When you want to only hear those contacts ring through, change the default ringtone to silence. All contacts that don't have a custom ringtone will still ring but it will be silence. The custom ringtones will still sound.

You can leave Feedback for Apple here http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

if you only want a few contacts to be able to come through, just put them in your favorites list

while you're actively using the phone, do no disturb doesn't work like that