My 23 month old son wakes at 5.30 to 6am every day

[Beautifulbabyboy]

Which is fine, it is just his sleep pattern. He goes asleep at 7pm every night. But I keep thinking of a previous AIBU thread where parents who let their toddlers watch 2-3 hours of tele a day were flamed, in particular one poster said parents who do this "obviously their heart isn't in it"

So AIBU to think these same parents don't have an early riser...

Because my heart is very much into parenting, but from 5.45 to hopefully 7.15 I can manage to lie in bed whilst DS watches the iPad... Or am I supposed to be bouncing around downstairs coming up with fun filled activities at dawn?

(For the record he also watches the bedtime hour on cbeebies - wind down time.. - hence the 2-3 hours)

It really doesn't seem to make much difference to DS what time he goes to bed or how much sleep he has had in the day

He goes to bed at 7:30pm, sometimes 8pm but any later than that and he is a mess and wakes up multiple times and still wakes up early

I'm just hoping he grows out of it, and if he doesn;t I'm looking forward to him being old enough to use a gro clock or play / watch a dvd for a bit before dragging me out of bed :)

DD felt rough yesterday and went to bed at 1930. This morning she got up at 5am. Gah. Bloody kid.

You wait, when she is an annoying teen wanting to lie in at the weekend I am going to run SCREAMING into her bedroom at 5am. JUMP on her bed and shout "Getupgetupgetupgetup" until she is weeping.

HA!

I don't see what is wrong with dreaming of a toddler that goes to bed at 7pm and wakes at 7am?!?!

But, for arguments sake, let's say I keep my toddler up to 9pm, so he will wake at 7.30. What magical parenting am I supposed to be doing between 7.00pm and 9pm. Generally that is when I watch the channel 4 news followed by whatever crap follows it.

For those of us that don't live in a generally warm sunny European mainland country, what are we supposed to do with the toddlers? Play cafe shut. Park shut. Am not playing dotty dinasours at 8.30, paint? Do craft?

Really? Really?

I really want an "earth" mother, who has a baby who only needs 10 not 12 hours sleep, to come on and tell me what she does at the start and/or end of the day that means tv is never involved!!

5am -breakfast of organic lentils

5:30 am - rainbow shower with lights and music

6am - bake organic oatmeal cookies

6:30am - arts and crafts. From things we collected on our nature walk yesterday

7am - baby yoga

7:30am - Whole family goes for a run. Even the toddler

8am - Mandarin flash cards

8:30am - Violin practice

9am - light snack of mung beans

9:30am - walk to deli for spot of loud parenting

10:30am - nature walk - also some more loud parenting

You're just not trying hard enough Beautiful

My neighbour has one child, a girl of 8, whom she never allowed to watch telly as she thought it was bad for her. The child was an early riser so my neighbour would do baking and crafts with her. At 5am.
One of my three tinies is a mega early riser and will wake the house if left unattended but there's no way I'm starting baking before dawn, with a two year old! And you're dead right, my heart most certainly isn't in it at 5am. It's back in bed!

I don't have any problem with TV, put it on if you want!

I would rather see DS 7pm-9pm than 5am-7am though personally. Some people prefer the other way round which is fine too.

Usually in the hour or two before bed you do dinner, bath time, stories etc rather than play cafes and crafting anyway.

My dd is 2, and she wakes from 5am. I usually grab her for snuggles, as she won't watch the tv. She's like a mini hot water bottle, which is great as its winter here in Oz. I wish she watched tv, as she will eventually wake wanting 'bweakfast'.

So, I have to wake at some point, normally half an hour after she's pestered me. As for doing crafts and baby yoga

I cannot remember the last time I had a lie in?

Ds1 is nearly 11, has always been an early riser and still is. It doesn't always pass. Ds2 is a night owl like me.

It is swings and roundabouts. My oldest is just about to be 21. He was an early riser,(we watched an enormous amount of Thomas the Tank Engine videos!) and it was a nightmare as I was working full time and I was dead on my feet,most of the time, after my commute to work as well.

Eventually he did fall into a 7.30pm till 6.30 am routine....until he hit his teens!then getting him out of bed to go to school was a nightmare,and getting him to sleep before me and DH went to bed was nigh on impossible.

In his late teens he was coming in at 4.30am!!

Now he works /has college and it has come full circle and he is back to a reasonable getting up,going to sleep routine!!

My other two seem to be following similar paths...don't think my heart was ever "in it", I just managed somehow and did whatever it took!!

Isn't the problem with keeping kids up later that they eventually need to be up at 7am for school etc?
Also if I didn't have my evenings I would literally have no time to do anything for myself. I grab an hour on here if she is having a nap but other than that I watch Cbeebies/make cakes/paint/go to the park/meet her friends/feed the ducks/go to toddler groups etc all day every day. I need to do finances and check emails or call a friend for a chat every now and then! I would like an hour or so more sleep, but not at the expense of never having a solitary waking moment!

The only way I broke the early waking of DD2, is by keeping her up until 9-9.30 or sometimes 10.She naps from 1.30-3.00 or later today! Got fed up of 5 am starts, just means my evenings start later.she will still get up for nursery at 7.30,but is grumpy at lunchtime,and will nap everyday.

If DS went to bed at 7pm he'd be up a lot earlier than 7am! Even when he slept 9pm-7.30am I still had a couple of hours between his bedtime and mine. If he went to bed at 7pm and was up at 5.30am I'd be going to bed at 9pm myself.

You still get the same amount of sleep overall, the choice is just between evenings and mornings.

I'm so with you. I have a 5.30am riser and iggle and pals help me through the first couple of hours.

Oh god, I could never give up my evenings in favour of an extra hour to save him from telly! My evening is very, very precious after spending all day with try three terrors boys.

Yanbu
We have a 5.30am bird here too and he is all of 3 yo. About 6 months ago he was not keen on tv at all or the ipa and I really struggled to keep him busy in the morning.
Now be plays with the ipad, reads a book himself and then watches tv..I am delighted!
Do what it takes to remain sane. Flamers can go judge someone else!

My 21 month old is up at 5.30 singing most mornings. I try and get her back to sleep with bf but she has a guzzle then is full of even more beans... So I get dh to have her till he leaves for work lol.

Catfish your post made me laugh so much!!! I think the problem has been the lack of mung beans and lentils in my ds's diet....

I really hope new mums who are feeling guilty and/or are being terrorised by smug parents into thinking the tv is the devil, read this and take hope! (They certainly wouldn't have on the other thread - which I will try and find to post link to...)

Ds (almost 8mo) will sit, making very excited noises, throughout most of Room on the Broom

I do wish I was better at this though.
We do fun things. Water play, painting, picking raspberries in the garden, park, bla bla but it's just too hard to start at 5:45am.
Also, I'm not very good at having ds join in when I'm doing housework. It just doesn't seem to happen for me. Sometimes he'll play alone for a mi ute but I do use the tv a bit too .
The mornings are tough. I used to get up at 5:30 to go to the gym before work five days a week. Nowadays in the morning I just feel as though I've spent the night out with Ronnie wood. i.e: rough. And I need a bit of kids tv so ds sits still while I come to. I am though.

Noooo Emily - don't be embarrassed, that is what this thread is for! You/ we are all fab parents. We don't need to be the Duracell bunny!

I certainly put more effort into my days with DS than I ever did at work, and they paid me!!!! I certainly wouldn't have been jumping up and down asking my boss for extra tasks at 5.45am!!

SHarri with you - evenings are literally my only time out as a single mum. I think I would go insane if I never had a minute away from her!
Love her to bits clearly, but as a single mum you can't not talk to another adult all day (I don't count baby chat at play groups as it is all about her which is right, but you know what I mean!)

I crawl downstairs at 6am (gro clock keeps them in bed until then). Shut the sittingroom door, put tv on then promptly doze on the sofa as ds3 feeds every two hours and I need to feel more human.

Me and my oh also take turns getting up at the weekend, and boy are we protective of that time lol

Should add the older two play nicely and ds3 is in his cot in the bedroom having a snooze at 6am.

I'm with you - I have been doing the early mornings - 530-630 for 11 years now and am growing very bored with it - I have seen more kids tv than I care to imagine. Hopefully only a couple of years left.

11 years :(

I was hoping he'd grow out of this in a year or two