Help! 3 year old waking up at 5 every day

[Rainallnight]

I am on my knees. Is there a way to get him to sleep later?

We’ve dropped his nap, room is dark…

What are we missing?

Thank you for ANY help

You can try a later bedtime, but he may just be an extreme lark! Lots of little kids are.

Instead get a Gro Clock and teach him to stay in his bed/quiet for longer. Set it forward ten minutes at a time so he gets used to it. Leave him with some books/quiet toys to play with when he wakes up. Make sure his room is safe/there are stair gates where necessary. Combine with a sticker chart/reward jar.

You are going to hate my suggestion, but roll with it, and go to bed earlier. It is much easier to reason with an adult than a toddler.
Do (quiet!) chores when you get up, so there is very little to do in the evenings. Record stuff you want to watch but is on too late, and watch it at 8 the next evening after toddler is in bed, but before you turn in.

My early waking (none sleeping through) toddler is now very nearly a teen. He STILL wakes between 6 and 6.30 every day, is often awake when I got to bed at 11 - although he is banished upstairs at 9.30 - and rarely sleeps through. I often hear him in the night, although I'm not required to do anything other than roll over and go back to sleep.

Both of mine were like this at 3. I tried everything and nothing worked, keeping them up later made them wake up even earlier (and be in an awful mood all day).

Now they are 5&8 we get to around 7:30 woo hoo.

We just had to go to bed early to deal with it.

You need to be kind but firm and direct him to stay in bed or his room quietly, and can come and see you at a time determined suitable by you, with a cheery alarm clock so he knows the "proper" time to get up, lots of reward etc. Good luck!

Go to bed earlier. I went to bed at 9 for years. Nothing we tried made mine sleep any later.

I tried everything. He only started sleeping past 5am when he started school... Probably not what you want to hear! I had to go to bed early in order to survive. I won't pretend I wasn't jealous of friends who had children that slept more!

My DS is now 13 and still an early riser! Some children just are early birds. But 5am is too early. When he was about 3 he was up around 5.30am for months and it was hideous. Made the day seem so long. We used a Gro clock and it was reasonably successful. We got him to 6.20am which was a win as far as we were concerned. Start by setting it very close to his wake up time (say 5.10am), so that the 'sun' comes up soon after and lots of praise/stickers/rewards (whatever you prefer) for staying in bed until the sun came up. Then very very gradually move the time later. It needs to be motivating so don't make it hard for him to achieve. I'm afraid you do have to accept that he may never be a long sleeper though! But there's early and there's early, I do feel your pain! Good luck!