…to ask 5 1/2 yr old to stay in bed/room until 6:15am? When do your kids get up?

[Newbie887]

Weve been trying to get youngest son who is 5 1/2 to stay in his room (either in his bed or playing quietly with toys) until the sun on his gro clock comes up at 6:15am. He is generally awake at 5:30am.

It’s been about a year now of trying and we are just not getting anywhere. Everyone is tired. Personally I think we should give up trying and accept one of us gets up at 5:30am with him, but partner thinks we should keep at it. Ideally he would like him in his room until 7am but we have compromised on 6:15. He regularly resorts to shouting at him each morning when he won’t keep quiet, which leads to crying / tantrums / generally shitty start to each day, and he rarely does go back to bed anyway.

what time do most children wake up? If they wake early will they play in their room / take themselves downstairs to play or do they wake the whole house as my son does?! We have some very well behaved cousins in the family who will either sleep or entertain themselves until gone 8am each morning, but not sure if this is normal

Have you tried slowly building up towards a later time?

So, start with a few days of setting the sun on his clock for a time earlier than he currently wakes - this is to build early success with him and you can give him lots of praise for 'staying in bed until the sun rises' and 'well done for playing quietly until the sun was shining' (even though it was shining when he woke). Every bedtime, remind him, 'Come in to Mummy when the sun shines'.

Then, after maybe a week of that, change the time by only 5 minutes maximum (without telling your child). Keep reinforcing at bedtime and telling him how well he is doing.

A week later, another 5 minutes...

You may actually find that he slowly does sleep longer as he will have less stimulation than running in to you or being shouted at.

Also, strangely, many children sleep later if they go to bed earlier. Something to do with roughly 2 hour sleep cycles (if their natural cycle ends while it is still too early to wake, they often enter another 2 hour cycle but if it is nearly waking up time when they come to the end of that cycle then they are more likely to wake). My own children definitely sleep more soundly, and for longer, if they go to bed earlier.

It doesn't sound like your LO is ready for this yet. My older two could stay in bed for a bit from 3ish and had a Gro Clock but my youngest is 5 and has SEN and it wouldn't be appropriate for him. We do lie with him in his room though if he wakes up before 6:30 and sometimes he goes back to sleep, other times he doesn't and we end up getting up. We've had some 5:30 phases and it's really hard going.

Entirely reasonable expectation. My 5.5 year old often entertains herself in her room for an hour before I get up. She has done this (not for an hour admittedly) since she was 2.5. At that point she was still in a cot and just had some books and then later a Yoto to play with. Since she moved to a bigger room she has toys and simple craft bits. 5.30 is not morning time in my opinion.

Have you tried incentivising him (stay in your room for X days and get treat of choice) or alternatively a consequence for not following the rule? (No doubt that will upset some people on here but as far as I am concerned a 5.5 year old can follow this instruction and is simply choosing not to.)

Also to add she has a bedside lamp she can turn on and plenty of things to play with. If she comes out when quietly take her back and say it's not time to get up yet, but that's pretty rare.

My son used to get up at 5 it drove me mad, we said he could get up and play and left him food and a drink. Despite being crazy and impulsive he is super good and would come down and stick the TV on aged 5.

Agree with the suggestion of a Yoto player if you’re able to buy one. You can set a maximum volume so you won’t be woken by it. Yoto player is great because it’s a sleep / wake clock, normal digital clock, night light and audio player all in one (not affiliated! Just very dependent on ours).

I would get up , snuggle on the sofa with my child , shove a slice of toast in their hand and a drink within reach . They would watch Tom and Jerry , I would doze until a reasonable time . Wasn’t perfect but we survived and he is now a well rounded man who seems to have coped with this neglectful upbringing.

Ours is allowed to get up at 6, and we put something on Netflix until 7. We both then go back to sleep til 7 at which point at least one of us gets up.

At that age my daughter knew she wasn't allowed to make noise and wake people up until 7am. Once it was 6am she could go downstairs, watch tv, make her breakfast etc.

Agreed, but it won't happen overnight, so before then someone needs to be prepared to get up and put him back to bed etc.

If he's generally awake at 5 30, I'd set the groclock for 5.40. Prizes for a week of success.
Then move the time to 5.50, then 6.00.

I don't think working towards a 6.15 up and about is unreasonable, but it will require effort.
looks at teens who both had a "lie in" til 7am today, perhaps ignore me

From a young age we had the gro clock and the rule that you stay quietly in bed until the sun is up. 6.30 for our eldest who was an early riser. For his younger sister, its 6.45 as she wakes later usually. Eldest is not allowed to wake us until 7 now (he is nearly 8), and is not allowed to turn lights on til 6.30 as early morning light exposure only makes early waking continue. He wakes somewhere between 6.20 & 6.45 most days and goes to pee before reading in bed

My 6 year old gets up about 6. One of us is usually up with his little sister who usually is up between 5-5:45 already. We just take it in turns as to who gets up early. Some kids are just early risers there’s nothing you can do about in.

I have a 10 year old too and in comparison, he used to be up at 5.30 every morning but now sleeps until 7.30!

😂 I have 4dc and each of them aged 5/6 have never understood groclocks (or just pull them out of the socket/ignore). They all woke before 6am. We just accepted it and by the time they get to 12/13 they start sleeping in late and you can't get them up at all.

It's just one of those things unfortunately. I go to bed extra early to compensate and always have.

His body clock is stuck at that time.
You need to treat him exactly the same way you would if he woke at 2am. It’s nighttime - no TV, don’t engage, put him back to bed. If he gets up again straight back to bed. It might be painful but stick at it.

I would work out a time that was acceptable to get us (say 7am) and treat anything earlier than that as a night waking.

My friend used to get up with her child at 4am and put the TV on. This went one for YEARS. And obviously the child is rewarded for waking at 4am with the TV. Of course they are waking at that time!

Wait til he's a teenager and is reluctant to get out of bed then, when he does, he goes into the shower for an hour (our son was found once reading a book at arm's length in the shower; he was an avid reader, 😅). As a youngster, he was regularly up extremely early and it was pretty tiring but one of us got up, gave him breakfast, sat with him and put a video on while cat napping before we had to get ready for work. Our son is now in his 30s and in a decent career with a lovely partner. Your son will grow out of it but it's very tiring. People have different parenting strategies and that's their choice but we didn't shout at our son. I was shouted at as a child and it just instilled a sense of fear in me. I hope he starts sleeping a bit longer soon

Yanbu, that age is old enough to wake up at least by 6:30. I don't blame your dh for shouting as that is really highly frustrating to be woken up at that time. My ds is an early riser, he's 8 now and gets up at 6 for no reason. He reads till 7 every day until we have to wake up.
When he was 5 and waking up then he had all his favourite toys in the room and he could play there if he wanted. He used to wake at 5:30 but was not allowed to wake us up before 6:30. He had a Yoto player so would get up and listen to that, then started reading , playing with toys. Not all kids might be mature enough to do that though. There needs to be some firm boundaries though.

At 5.5 I let mine go downstairs and amuse themselves

No way would I be getting up at 530am with a child that age.

At 5 we used to let the children come in our room and amuse themselves (no tv but books and or toys) until one of us got up. We didn’t get good quality sleep at that point but we managed to doze on and off and have a softer start to the day.

5 is definitely old enough to be able to get up quietly and not disturb everyone else. We have a grow clock for our newly 3 year old and he understands the concept of staying in his room until it goes yellow in the morning.

He usually wakes up anywhere between 6:30 and 7:30, the grow clock is set to go yellow at 7:30.

My 6yo is expected to wait in his room until 8am at the weekend unless we are already up. We have to drag him out of bed with much protesting he's tired at 7:15 to get him up for school but hes quite happy to get up at 6am at the weekend to get TV and attention. He has toys, books and some basic craft stuff on his desk in his room if he wakes up early. If he wakes up between 5 and 6 I treat that as night time and settle him back in his bed!

DD1 is 5 and knows that until her Yoto light turns pink, she must either stay in bed or get up and play quietly in her room. We let her have her tablet in the morning too, although she rarely uses it and prefers just to play with toys in her room.

I absolutely would not be getting up at 5:30am. I would be in a foul mood for the rest of the day!

I'm not fussy about screen time in mornings either, and DD1 can get Netflix on by herself and watch Lucas the Spider or whatever else she wants too.

Dd2 wakes up about 9 - 9.30am. Sometimes 10am

We never really managed the Gro Clock and DS knew what buttons to press to make the sun come up. But we have had success with an actual clock and a reward chart.

if he stayed quietly playing until the little hand was pointing to the 7 he got a sticker. 7 stickers in a row he got a toy. Any false starts then need to go back to the beginning. He’s 5 and pretty good with it now.

If his 2 year old brother senses a whiff of him then that’s game over but otherwise DS2 will sleep so this was a priority!

We used to tell them they could play quietly until 7 a.m. (8 on weekends and days off) and they weren't allowed to go downstairs before then, though they could pay with each other in their rooms. We did this from them starting school and it worked well. If they got up sooner, or were noisy, we'd tell them to get back to bed because it wasn't time to get up yet. They're now 12 & 13 and get up when they like (except for school, ofc).