To think this is the worst thing about parenting small children?

[Iheartherain]

5 bloody am.

I thought the clocks going forward had reverted us to a more civilised wake-up time of around 6, but no.

Please don’t give advice as a year or more of trying to fix this hasn’t worked 😅 but honestly it is pretty miserable. I can’t have hobbies in an evening or watch ‘adult’ TV or nights out or date nights if we got a babysitter.

I am sick of being tired and yawning, fat because I seek sugar to boost my energy and always have a headache. It’s shit.

And nits. I'd never ever seen a nit until my youngest was about 8. You could have peeled me off the ceiling....the HORROR!

I feel seen and this is really giving me a chuckle

They're not hungry? A child who has just woken up? A 4 yr old, isn't hungry ? Even if they say they're hungry?

Fine, give them breakfast at 4am. That will help..

I don’t think mine is hungry when he wakes, actually! But it is somewhat circular to keep this up.

There are - thankfully a minority of posters - who now have teenagers and either have forgotten what it’s like or didn’t have early risers. I suspect a bit of both. These posters are convinced that it is our indulgent parenting that has somehow produced children who wake so early. I don’t think anything can be said to convince them otherwise!

@Delatron genuinely, it’s not helping, is it?

You do what you have to do to save your sanity.

I have 6. Only one has ever had (and at 12 still has) a 5.15am wake up.

I tried every suggestion ever put to me and none of them worked. He just doesn’t need the sleep, and just has a wake up time. He himself has tried recently to change it as “5.15am is boring as everyone else is sleeping”, but again, nothing works.

Tv/DVD on a timer plug so it couldn’t be turned on early and rotating books/toys in his room (placed in after he went to bed) to keep him quiet and in his room was the only way to deal with it after a certain point.

Some people can sleep train. Some people can “just tell them to stay in bed.” That doesn’t work for everyone.

I’ve got one early riser, one late riser and one who is sometimes early and sometimes late. Fortunately my early riser just comes into bed and cuddles for a good hour or so which is very nice, so no need for screens or active participation from me.

I have 2 kids and I regularly thank the deities I don't believe in that my son came first, because if it's been the other way round I too would have been a smug 'have you tried just putting them back to sleep?' 'i don't know why anyone uses tablets, take some colouring in' kind of parent. Thank God I was humbled early by the kid who never slept, walked at 8 months and was genuinely climbing my walls by a year old. The child who even at 5 has a precision bedtime routine or he'd still be up at midnight, who won't be entertained by anything (actually he is now entertainabke by audiobooks and Lego and at a push a switch game but before he was 4, he just had to be physically moving)

His sister, bath, supper, asleep, literally asks to go to bed then gets upset if she doesn't get to snuggle in bed for half an hour before going downstairs. Tmher favourite things are stories and cosy blankets and her rocking chair. She will sing and dance to action songs and draw for an hour and she's not yet 2 and instead of a screen entertains herself with happyland people in restaurants.

I can assure you I tried all the same wholesome options both times and with my son nothing worked so we got inventive on every point. With my daughter things worked and we stopped escalating available options. Also my son, when ekft to cry even accidentally was of the got so worked up he'd vomit variety so leaving and ignoring also not options.

As I say I'm glad it was this way round because if I'd had him second I'd have been eating a lot fo humble pie 😂

Lack of sleep, or sleep at the ‘wrong’ time, really messes with me. I have long periods of time that I simply can’t remember when I was in this position.

I also sought out sugar and gained more weight when the DC were in this sleep pattern than I did during the pregnancies. I basically ate way too much toast, butter and jam/marmalade (quick to make and easy to eat) and chocolate (quickly satisfied the sugar craving).

I really sympathise.

DS1 has always been an early riser. When he was a baby, he slept through from 7pm ish but always woke at around 5am. He is 15yo now and remains an early riser, he’s awake at 6am every single day, be it a school day, weekend, holiday etc. Just grateful that he can now entertain himself and be safe!

Honestly my problem has always been at the other end, getting him to sleep, then getting him up for nursery the next day. We finally have a 9pm bedtime and a 6am start and I'd chew off an arm before I'd mess with what's finally working. He doesn't do more than 9 hours though so going earlier than 9pm would serve noone.

That said when we introduced supper before bed, Weetabix or toast, hestarted finally sleeping through. Otherwise he was up at 4an hungry but also tired. Hideous combination.

I'm also not saying give them breakfast at 4am I'm saying that you're wrong a child can't be hungry, it's a mad assertion

I remember those days, they are brutal. Luckily gro-clocks did work for my DC from about age 2 but we still had nearly a year of it with each. I barely remember DS1's first year of school as DS2 was such a crap sleeper.

I did get one positive thing from it though- I decided to try and turn it into a positive so a few times a week I would give DS2 an iPad to watch and pop an exercise dvd on (I started with The Shred then onto various others). That way I had done a workout before the day properly started. It got me back into exercise and I still do a couple of early morning workouts a week over ten years later.

I had this. Couldn’t wait to sleep in again. At one point we decided to get them a dog and a cat. Kids are now 20+ and the dog and the cat are both 15 and wake me up at 5 every morning for a wee. They both knock on the door until I wake up. Who knew they’d be like that.. 😂

Feels like absolute Groundhog Day. Am tired so I go to bed early - then someone will wake up or cry and wake me up but go back to sleep then I lay awake for hours unable to sleep. Then as I drop back off my eldest two are up for the day at 5am. At full volume. We stopped them going downstairs to watch tv because it woke the dog who would bark and wake the baby so they stay upstairs. It’s the fighting, the screaming, Alexa playing vindaloo at a volume, in and out of my bedroom like Noel’s fucking house party to tell tales on the other brother then shouting until the baby is awake and then begins another day of it. Breakfast but no one wants the same options of breakfast we have everyday, no one knows they need to get dressed, suddenly everyone’s forgotten how to put a sock on or where their shoes are and it’s a constant loop of shouting instructions just hoping someone listens. Arguing the whole way to school over nothing and everything. Eldest questions me the whole walk there like it’s the final round of the chase and then you would think it’s bliss until 3.15 but that’s when I do a full time job on no sleep and patience until it’s pick up time and we argue the whole way home over everything, everyone needs snacks and drinks when we get in like they’ve never eaten, pick up the baby, do the dinner, feed the dog, battle to get everyone to bed and then maybe there’s ten minutes where I can sit and breathe and decompress before the dog has her witching hour and I am so fed up and tired and headachy and dehydrated and have a million and one to dos that I go to bed instead just for some peace. Rinse. Repeat. I mean there are some pockets of magic in amongst it all or honestly I would have climbed out of the window and ran away. I know I will miss it all when they are grown up but fml these early years are in the trenches and no one is telling you this. No one is casually mentioning the soul destroying monotony it’s just #makingmemories

My 18 month old goes to bed at around 11pm on average.
last night was 1:30am because what I thought was a weirdly early bedtime of 7:30pm turned out to be a nap so she was up from 8:30pm-1:30.
so no evenings for me.
I sometimes get up at 6:30 to have a coffee and read before work. But we both slept in today though she was angry at me because i had the audacity to wake her up at 9am.

The worst for me was toileting. Tho I have to say I found the teen years much harder than toddler.

How old are they? We had this when DS turned 4. We got one of those knock-off Gro Clocks and it’s worked for us! Recommend it.

Agree, 100%

I feel exactly the same. I eat because I'm exhausted but barely get any sleep.

Can't exercise cos stuck on the couch under a feeding baby 8+ hours a day, plus got the older one to deal with.

I'm not exactly a sporty person, but by god I hate being glued to the couch all the time, knocking back sugary tea and biscuits to keep my awake.

(And yes, I have a double buggy and could out them both it and go for a walk....but it's not always easy).

Gro clock here too.
Have to stick to it though, if they're up before Mr Sun, they go back to bed even if it's only 5minutes.
Ours is always set for 6.45am

It's worse when it's 5am and they want you to get out of bed IMMEDIATELY and make their breakfast and find a random video on YouTube they can't remember the details of and get every single toy out and not actually play with them and also do endless cartwheels, pirouettes, roly polys and handstands while you sit there cold and bewildered

My son has never gotten up early, thank God. Even as a baby. Sounds brutal. He doesn’t go to bed early either, though. Would going later help?

OP I could have written the same about my first. My second was better. It was relentlesslesly grim as you don't know if or when it will end.

We are not far aay from those days but bit by bit they have receded (kids now 3 and 5). People kept telling me to dig in and that I would emerge from the baby tunnel years. I could not conceive of it at the time, but in a few short years it turns out that might be right.

You being heavily pregnant makes the whole thing 10 times worse. I used to absolutely despair at being up at 5.30 and looking at the clock and thinking of all of the long day stretching ahead, where I was 'on' from the minute I opened my eyes (or actually had them opened for me...). Even your reference to rara the lion makes me shudder at the visceral memory of how awful it was.

You will be fine. This does in fact pass. Unfortunately you just have to dig in and get through it. Despite how you cannot, at this stage, conceive of the ever getting better, it actually does. They just need to get older.

Best of luck

It is tough when they are small and wake so early.
In 10 years you won't be able to get them up in the morning 😁

And it's not just that the early wakings get better , your actual waking hours get less intense as well as they can start having quiet time (whether on screens or just playing) without you being right in the middle of it all. So it gets better from all angles.

Unfortunately it just needs time and you cant make that go any quicker, but believe me you'll get there (from a former skeptic of similar messages).