Please help, early riser!

[jugglingmonkey]

Hello,

Our 15 month old DS has always been an early riser, 5.30am is standard.

We've had periods of 6am/6.15am, but recently we're back to 5.30am (at the latest)!

We're currently trying a tough love approach, not letting him out of the cot until 6am at the latest. Two days in and he's standing up at the cot bars, hysterically crying once he wakes up. He has moments where he sits down and settles, but is up again minutes later.

Shall I persevere with this approach or is there a better solution?

Background:

Great eater, good sleeper (7pm bed and normally sleeps through). Currently avoiding bath time as he is going through a screaming phase in the bath too, but still has a consistent bedtime routine.

Any help or further tips much appreciated!

[FATEdestiny]

Anything before 6.30am and we treat it like a night time wake up.

So do whatever it is you did do before he was sleeping through or would do on the odd occasions he might wake in the night.

[Christelle2207]

No proper advice but mine had a phase of this and got past it, average get up time is now 6/6.30 (at 18m) which isn't too bad IMO!
Pushing his bedtime back to 7.30 helped a bit, he still doesn't sleep through much but has never, ever slept more than 11h in a row (thus we aim for 7.30 -6.30). Bad habit I know but whenever ours wakes, which fairly often is between 5 and 6, we give him a bottle and put him into bed with us where he often has a doze and occasionally goes back to sleep! Early mornings have been a lot more bearable since we started doing that. He now rarely wants to run around before 7.

[omama]

What does his daytime look like? Naptimes & length?

IME early waking is caused by either overtiredness (in which case give more daytime sleep or an earlier bedtime) or by the timing of the nap being too early. If on 2 naps still its likely he needs to be on one. If on one nap and its in the morning, you need to slowly push it later til it starts closer to lunchtime.

Finally we also set a time which was an acceptable wakeup. Before that ds would have to stay in his room as if it was night. This never gave results in isolation but gave me an extra hour or so in bed

[Snuffleump]

I'm reading with interest, I think I might need to do what omama suggests with dd. I have tried it by accident before but then her nap clashes with lunch which doesn't feel ideal.

[jugglingmonkey]

He's on one nap, but at nursery it's after lunch, and at home I can't keep him up beyond 10.30! So a bit erratic.

However, day three of our 'it's still nightime' approach, and we seem to be making progress. He slept until 6.35am today!

[omama]

Great news juggling. Does he sleep for long at nursery? If he doesnt try & have an early bedtime on those days - encourages s better night's sleep. Just keep at it & encourage that nap towards lunchtime. Much easier when they sleep in

Snuffle when they first transition to one nap it can clash with lunch for a while until they can cope staying up til afterwards. So for a while you might need to do an early lunch at say 11 (this is what we did) or a biggish snack mid morning then lunch when she wakes. Hth