Early waking - what do you do ?

[Hunnybunn72]

Hi, my 1 year old has started waking at 5.30-6am. She had always slept till 7am. What do you do? Leave them to cry and hope to go back to sleep, get them up or shush them ?

[toomuchcoffeetoomuchwine]

Reduce lunchtime sleep, put them down a bit later and block out light in room (mine is waking earlier now it gets light earlier and these worked).

[DoItTooJulia]

Get up. Well one of us does. Today it was my turn.

Sometimes we let him look at his books or put our bedroom TV on for 30 minutes if its super early.

Ds1 was a sleeper, but used to take upwards of an hour to get off to sleep. This one is no a sleeper, will often wake before 6 am but is a dream to put down. Not sure which one i prefer!

[jumperooo]

They sleep a bit less overall from 1yr apparently. I think average need is about 13-14 hours in 24 hours. My 17 month used to sleep until 7am but for the last few months its more like 6am. So here its 7pm - 6.15am-ish, with a 1.5 - 2 hour nap in the day. They are all different though, but depending on what time yours goes to bed, early waking is pretty normal

[WillSingForCake]

Don't forget the clocks go forward in a couple of weeks which'll make things easier!

[ZuleikaD]

Go to bed early! And get up when she does - no point torturing yourself. Larks are larks, unfortunately, and I wouldn't put any faith in the clocks changing - children reset their internal clocks in under a week. Don't make the mistake of reducing lunchtime sleep either - daytime naps and night-time sleep serve different purposes.

[abigboydidit]

DS goes through phases like this and is coming up for 3. At 1-1.5 years I found the key was plenty daytime sleep and am early bed. It was like sleep created sleep! And plenty fresh air and exercise during the day. He started getting up between 515-530 recently so we have been putting him down a wee bit earlier and that seems to be helping him go through to 6am. We have never returned to the bliss of 7am starts!

[Albertatata]

Go to sleep earlier is the only solution I have found. Oh and I look forward to the march changing of clock (but dred them going back in Oct!)