any advice - 3 yr old waking 5.30 every morning

[cookiemonstress]

Any tips/advice for dealing with 3 yr old who constantly wakes 5.30 am every morning... Becoming a nightmare as she is constantly over-tired and we inevitably have some mid morning melt-down. She naps most days (40 mins) but not consistently..

. She wakes everyone including dd2 who would happily sleep until 7.30 onwards. She won't play on her own in her room (won't play on her own, ever). I'm not expecting miracles but 5.30 is just too early in my opinion.! I've bought the bunny clock, she has black out curtains and goes to bed somewhere between 7-7.30. If she goes to bed any later, she wakes even earlier. I'm stumped. Have done the whole rapid return and explained that it's not time to get up..

Is she ever going to sleep longer??!

is it time to drop the daytime nap?

have tried but she gets so tired at nursery (3 days a week) that she flakes out anyway.. We had a spell of 6 weeks with no nap but made no difference to the waking and she just ended up even more tired.

what time does she go to bed

I had heard if they are overtired then they fall into a really deep sleep straight away rather than later in night and can wake up earlier - am not sure of technicalities of it though so forgive me if am wrong

3 is still quite young to be dropping the nap if she needs it, esp if she is needing to replenish her sleep

take her out this morning, run her around in fresh air, in the car this afternoon for nap and early to bed

fingers crossed

this happened to us cookiemonstress when DD was 2 and a half. It was HELL! But, it was a phase and it didn't last. That's the only good news i have for you. We too had blackouts and the bunny clock (she worked out how to change the ears very quickly), we tried bribery, threats, sticker charts, everything. Nothing made any difference and thankfully she outgrew it. You do have my utmost sympathy though. The only thing that made it manageable for me in the end was to make good use of the early start by doing the ironing, doing some exercise or preparing that evening's dinner.

Bad Luck! I gusee noone else in the family wants to be an early riser!
Hopefully it is just a phase that she will grow out of. My advice is do not do anything too fun, give too much attention at that time - a nephew used to wake at 5.30 at about that age, and the parents used to get up and give quality 1:1 time - reading, playing games, etc. He still does it now and he's 9 but at least he can turn the TV on or read to himself now!

Don't know how to stop her waking up sorry. What we did though was get a big clock, taught DS to read 7 o'clock and told him that he could read till then but he wasn't to shout us until 7am.

It hasn't worked every morning but it does most. Good Luck.

My DS has just mysteriously grown out of doing this after a 'phase' that lasted a year and is suddenly sleeping until 8am. I have no real explanation as to why he's stopped - am just very glad as it is SO awful. He's only 2.5, still having naps most days. The only change I can think of is that he's more boisterous/physical of late i.e charging round and climbing on everything, so guess he must be more physically tired.

Just wanted to express my sympathy really as I don't think anyone without an early waker can truly understand how bad it is - particularly if the parent isn't a 'morning person'. I tried all the usual recommendations without success too. The only thing that kept me at all sane was sending him to Grandma's for the weekend sometimes so that I could catch up.

I really sympathise DD is a consistent early riser and always has been - 6.30 am is a lie in for us and 5-5.30 is the norm. She is 22 months now and nothing we have done has changed it to so far - moving bedtimes, dropping naps, more naps, rapid return, boring wake up time, leaving toys by the bed, books by the bed, black out blinds - everything! However, she is not overtired so we don't have that issue to deal with. I'm afraid the only thing I can say is "this too shall pass", sorry I know its not much help.

thanks for all messages.. I am going to try to get her to bed a bit earlier so we can make some headway with the overtiredness and I guess just grit my teeth and hope that one day she learns to love her bed a bit more..

. She's always been a fairly early riser (I don't know who she gets this gene from, certainly not me) so I like to think I'm fairly realistic in what I expect (I think anywhere around 7 reasonable!). Anything before 6 though just feels bad psychologically, by the time I get to work I've been awake 4 hours!

At the weekends we do try and ignore her but she's harder to contain now. She can undo the stair gates on her own now and so we've woken to find her attempting to make her own breakfast , either that or she climbs her poor sister's cot and administers all sorts of bossy tasks. Keep hinting with my m-in-law to have her overnight but she's not biting, she knows she's awake so early!

my dd is 2 i know a bit younger but she always woke up at 6am and climbed in with us or started annoying her bro 8 weeks old we have now fitted a baby gate on her room door and she cant get out so she plays in her room reads books ect . maybe u should try this x

Hi, I just wanted to add that DS also used to wake on the button of 5.30am every day when he was younger (now 2.6) and he grew out of it too!! I used to bring him in with us and try and get him back to sleep or take him downstairs, wrap us up in a blanket on the sofa and put on the TV so at least I could try and get back to sleep while he watched the telly/DVD. I know how you feel, like you've done a whole day by lunchtime!

ds got a bubblestar clock when he was 2.5. He's now 4 and still waits for his clock to go 'into the yellow' before he gets up. It helped him to realise when it was too early. Look here