Early rising two and a half year old

[youretoastmildred]

Our dd2 can now effortlessly climb out of her cot. She does this any time from 5.30 am, which she believes is the middle of the night, and starts off with the apparent intention of just getting into bed with us, but then enjoys being awake too much and plays silly buggers until it is actually time for me to get up (6.30 4 days a week, more like 7.30 / 8 the others)

Until she could get out of the cot (about 5 nights ago) she would stay in bed till 7.30 / 8. Dozing mostly though I think she may also have been looking at books. However over the past few days her mood has been so atrocious, and so obviously over tired, that I think she had genuinely been sleeping a lot more and later in the mornings, and is really suffering from the lack of it.
So am I. I used to get up alone at 6.30 or even 6.45 and get myself together in peace before anyone else was up at 7.15 and be gone at 7.30. Now I am awake from 5.30 and when I do have to get up am being screeched and howled at because she is desperately tired, and followed around and become late and miss my train. dp doesn't get up with her as they don't need to be up till later and my nerves are fried with missing the sleep and having this constant howling and demands in the mornings.

(We also have a four year old in the same room but she happily sleeps until she is woken at 7.15 or 7.30.)

Here are my questions for you wise parents:

Do those gro-clock thingies work?
I am going to have to get her a proper bed, aren't I, because although she can climb out of the cot, she can't get back in.
Presumably if you are going to attempt to train them to stay in bed till a certain time you have to let them have a bed they can get back into.
Are there any other ideas?
I am loathe to involve dc1 as she needs her sleep so I don't want to go at this from the angle of "you can play in your room but you can't wake me". Also dc2 is shattered and miserable herself. So I want the solution to be staying in bed because if she does, I believe she will fall back to sleep, as she needs it.
We have a complication which is the landing light is on and the door open because dd1 has been having nightmares. This is new and I think part of the problem.

looking forward to all advice

thanks

We had success with the gro clock at the same age. We have gone from 5.30 to 6.30 (thinking of moving this to 7 now!) It took a while to work but I just stopped letting her in our bed and always walked her back to hers, pointing out firmly that the clock still had stars showing. At first she would sit in bed and look through her books (this was in summer so not dark) but gradually she started sleeping longer. I also used bribery too .

Oh thank you Countess, that does give me hope. Was she in a bed or a cot? How long did it take?

Sorry, yes she was in a single bed. It took maybe 6 weeks or so to train her to sleep that bit longer. I love the Gro clock, it has really helped her understanding of daytime/ nighttime. Just the 8 month old to sort out now

Good luck, Countess. Thanks for the advice

I really feel for you as we've basically been through the same thing with our 2yo ds. He's been having way too little sleep and our boy to put it lightly does not do well when tired.

We've in the process of using the gro-clock and would really recommend it. We're definitely making progress in the last 2 weeks, he originally was waking up between 5:30 and 6am but now he's waking up at 6:40. We're aiming for 6:50 next week.

Our son has been in a toddler bed since he was 17 months and took to it really well so in regards to climbing out I can't really advice but for the ease of her returning to bed by herself I'd make a change to a toddler bed.

Maybe a run down of our process might be helpful to you too:

1.Talk about having a clock in bedroom for a few days before putting it in the room (ds was v excited)

1. When the clock is in go through demo mode several million times, talk about it with as much excitement as your sleep deprived self can muster and keep asking the qu what if the sun/star is up, what does it mean?
2. Set time to original wake up for several days, so most of the time when they wake up the sun is out.
3. If they get out of bed before the sun is up, walk them back to their room explain the sun is not up yet and then keep quiet. Tuck them back in bed and make a swift exit. If they get back out again put them back to bed without a word. Repeat if needed.
4. Every several days we increased the time by 10-15mins until sleeping in until the new time.

I hope that's helpful. What we did find is that the more sleep our sleep deprived boy got the easier it was for him to stay in bed until later, so it was definitely harder to increase the wake up times in the beginning but it got easier. So try not to be disheartened if it's slow progress at first.

Brilliant, thanks I appreciate that.
Yes we need to get a bed. (the cot is falling apart anyway so that was always going to happen soon)
dd2 is very aspirational so the thing to do will be to sell it as a big girl thing: big girl bed, big girl clock, big girls know how to read the clock and stay in bed till the right time.
Right, plan formulated

Same for my ds, he's so independent. I think that's why the transition from cot to bed was so easy and so was the clock. the more he can do for himself the happier he is.

Good luck, I hope it goes smoothly.

We are in a similar situation, and like the op have two children who share a room. How do you avoid disturbing the older child when the younger one protests at being taken back to bed? I've been going with it (awake from 5:04 this am then up for the day before 6:00) because I know that Ds2 will protest heartily at being taken back to bed and he will wake ds1. We don't have another bedroom to use. Any ideas?

This may seem really harsh but my take on this is that the other child just has to put up with it, like you do, till you solve it. Just see it as working towards good rest for everyone.

It's easy for me to say as my older child just doesn't bother to wake up if she is tired and it doesn't concern her (so far anyway, but I haven't been doing the bad-ass techniques we are going to use, yet, partly because we have had guests, partly because dd2 has been genuinely not well)

I agree with the above. Also a stroppy tired toddler through the day will probably affect your older child more than 10 mins of disturbed sleep putting DS2 back to bed.

Yes to a bed. I wouldn't put too much faith in Gro-Clocks though - as the parent of three larks I'm in a position to tell you that two years of use (DD) have made absolutely no difference to her seemingly hardwired wakeup time of 5.30. DSs 1 and 2 also wake around then. I just go to bed by 9.

I found that nothing at all works, sorry! My ds now 9 years old, slept until 815 this morning, the first time ever he has slept past 6. So there is some hope but not for a while yet