Early rising?

[insolsticecat]

My DD wakes early all the time, it's usually 5am and for the last week DD (3.5) has been waking at 4.15am. THis is to get up, she is wide awake. We keep having spells of this and she rarely sleeps past 6am anyway.

It's really taking it's toll on me and DH, worse for me because once woken I really struggle to get back to sleep.

We have tried getting her to come quietly into our bed and not wake us, but she never goes back to sleep sop gets bored and starts being noisy.

We have tried encouraging her to stay in her own bed if she wakes and occupy herself quietly but she is too noisy.

We tried a reward chart which worked for a week.

She has a gro clock sleep training clock which does work and has improved the situation but she has now figured if there is one star round the egde it's almost time to get up so gets up anyway.

I have tried lavender baths, porridge last thing before bed. She has black out blinds, additional heating & blankets (her bedroom window doesn't fit properly and her room is quite cold)

short of reading her the riot act when she gets up which is only going to lead to tears and upset at 4.30am in the morning I am at a loss what to do.

She goes to bed between 7 & 8 everyday and usually sleeps all night until the small hours.

Hi there. Firstly I would like to admit I am a selfish cow and was relieved to here someone else has chronically early wakers! But I totAlly feel for u as it is bloody knackering and makes to a tetchy bissim... Or it does me anyway!! My son who is 3 1/2 has always woken early-we too bought a gro clock which also works, but he too realises 1 star means it's near sunshine so always comes through pretty much between 530 and 545-which prob feels like a lie-in to u at the mo. But his early rising just compounds our tiredness from our teething 18 month old who is getting up during the night and our 4 month old baby who I am co sleeping with ( never did this with first 2 but it's only way I can get enough sleep to survive!) who still frequently wakes for feeds-altho that just involves rolling over and-as my husband likes to say( endearingly) 'shoving a tit in' . I don't have a huge amount of advice but thought I would write as sometimes it's nice just to hear other people are going thru the sAme. The one thing I keep meaning to try is to reset the clock much later in the night just before u go to bed( our son sleeps deeply so u can go into his room and mAke a bit of noise ok) so that the last star appears closer to a more sociable hour? Best of luck... And remember( as I always tell myself When I am despairing of all the broken sleep) , one day we will be moaning about them NOT getting out of bed until midday.... Hopefully!!! X

Set the gro-clock for later?!

Or what happens if she goes to bed later? Not ideal but maybe she just doesn't need the sleep?

You have my sympathy, dd2 can be an early bird and I most certainly am not.

You have my sympathy too - we had this with ds1 aged 3.5 and had a two year old and newborn to contend with as well. we actually consulted everyone for advice - the HV, a psychologist etc but nothing could shift him from waking up at 5am every single morning. we did find that putting him to bed later (like 8.30) helped roll his wake up a bit, but obviously that meant that the evening was hard, because he did'nt play quietly in a corner (!) and we lost most of our adult time. We ended up feeling like we had to chose between having an evening and getting up at 5 every day. Once I accepted that I would be getting up at 5am every day it kind of helped, because basically I got into bed by 9pm every night in order to be up for him. It was only very exceptional circumstances (eg a very big party) which would make me break my 9pm rule - as you can imagine, this had quite an impact on my social life but I didn't care, sleep was the most important thing to me! taking it in turns to sleep in at the weekend also helped us get thru it. Good luck!

can you silently calmly keep putting her back to bed each time? Remove the gro clock and get one that just has an alarm? Stair gate on her bedroom door?