those of you whose toddlers wake at 5am

[CrushWithEyeliner]

like mine do you have any tips/strategies? How do you cope with it and is there any way i could encourage a longer morning sleep. She goes from 7am to 5am and i feel like I have taken a lot of hallucinogenic drugs

Hate to be the voice of doom, but my DD used to do this when she was a toddler, and STILL does it at age 23. DS2 (who is 3) does this now as well, up at 5am.

I have to say that if your DH is keen on you staying up to spend time with him in the evening, then maybe he can get up with the little one in the morning.

I feel your pain along and have posted on this myself- just looking at what a response this has got shows how normal it is tho I have to say I wonder out of those who accept it as a phase and 'just get up' cant be working a 6 day week!!

We put her bedtime later to 8pm as she didnt seem tired at 7 and thats made her go from 4.30-5am til almost 6 most days. Shes 23 mths and the gro-clock thing hasnt clicked yet.

She comes into bed and I read her stories until 6am when DP gets up and gets her milk and us a cuppa. We lounge about til half 6 and stagger about getting ready for work etc!! Shes due to change nursery and am wondering whether to drop the daytime hours nap shes currently getting...hey ho, trial and error!

I have been getting up at 5 - 5.30ish with DS for as long as I can remember. It's hard. And I'm on mat leave at the moment but before that was working FT

My DD has now gone back to waking around 6-ish again (6.45am this morning) - have changed nothing. But I know she could go back to pre-6am wakings again.

I work fulltime but am extremely philosophical about it all: I truly believe that there's a 90% chance this is a phase and she'll sleep in longer as she gets older. The fact that it's a phase makes it much more bearable for me. I simply go to bed earlier and fortunately so does my husband ;-) (Blissss!)

There is no point in fighting this people. Only a few people say their children still wake early. For most toddlers it will pass.

Thankfully D does help out in the morning too. I go for walk VERY early with dog so I get hr or so. I work for myself - would love to be able to be as philosophical and laid back as the Full Time worker mum!!

Would also love to go to bed earlier but in our ignorance of implications of being parents, bought house that needed work so the evenings are our time to do that - oh, the benefit of hindsight! Our own fault and not blaming her.

Am not fighting, more trying to help both her and us (if poss) as she gets so exhausted by mid morning that she can't even eat properly even on the few mornings when she is at nursery and has inspiration of other children eating. She then just falls asleep in my arms when I pick her up after lunch!

Want a moan about the last couple of days! Elderly neighbour drove thru our front garden which we literally just finished as he got foot stuck under accelarator (thank god, A had just come in from playing out there), dog got attacked by 3 other dogs on walk and has now become hyper-dog, I got parking ticket as it blew off dash when I closed the boot to car having sorted out dog who ate her bedding in there and child wouldn't go to sleep as kept talking about the 'beep-beep in garden - uh oh!!'. I think the phrase is ' when it rains, it pours!'

ohhh, i feel much better now, knowing its not only me being up at 5am every morning. What a loooong days..
Hopefully it will get better soon.
I am happy to wake up at 6am, wish that was reality.

Yeah, most days start at 5 here. I think it's just a human programming thing. I was vaguely hoping the dark mornings would make a difference but no such luck. Moving bedtime or dropping naps never made the least difference.

Been doing it for three years now, including a stretch of working fulltime. You just have to go to bed early.

We've used gro clock to good effect.

So ds knows to stay in bed and not scream out until the sunshine appears. It doesnt stop the early waking but at least we get our rest to deal with a tired ds!

I think sometimes he does doze for a bit if he is especially tired. We also have a book on his bedside table that he looks thru if bored and up early.

Ds1 went through this in phases and it was very tiring. It did pss though. Ds2 is also 18mths and doing the same thing, but it doesn't feel quite so hard this time. Except when he wakes Ds1 up too.

I tried later bedtimes, nightlights, no lights, nothing made any odds. Except time.

Am really struggling with this 5am waking. have new baby(10 weeks old) she sleeps beautifully until nearly 7am most nights. But 2 sons (2 and 4)who aresleeping in same room in bunk beds are continuously waking each other up at this unearthly hour! have tried clock, sleep clock, bribery, consequences, later bedtimes but nothing works. I think it has become such an entrenched habit that it's hard to break (although both seem to need the toilet at that time and I think the first one who goes ends up waking the second one on his return). Both are always grumpy and tired and need the sleep as we also do.
Thought I might give wake to sleep a try but don't know if it will cause more problems. I would be happy if I could just get them to 6am. Any tips out there from anyone who has used wake to sleep?

I put dd to bed at 8:30-9 and she sleeps until about 8-8:30. I'd rather she was up a bit later in the evening than start my morning at 5am...I'm so not a morning person!

Hmm, I'm lucky. Mine doesn't get up until at least 8:30 and mostly somewhere between 9 and 10:30! If we need to go out somewhere early, I wake him.

However, he does have staggered bedtimes too - depending on what we've been doing in the day. Sometimes can go at 7 if we've been up earlier and other times as late as 10.

Day time naps are hit and miss too. Sometimes he'll doze in the car if we're out and about. If we're home for the day he might go and have an hour on his bed. Mostly though, he stays awake.

His behaviour is perfectly fine and he never have any probs sleeping through so it suits us well.

He's just turned 2 and we've had this thing going since moving into a new home when he was 16 months. Before then, he used to wake up at about 6 for some milk then go back off until 8, every day. His bedtimes have always been staggered though.

I was just about to start a thread on more or less this topic, and here's one all done and full of reassurance that I'm not alone!

Does anyone else's DC do on-off early rising? DD2, now 14 months, has done this since she was 6 months old. She can go for 2, sometimes 4 weeks of 6.30-ish waking (oh, the bliss!) and just when I think we've really cracked it, we get another 2-4 weeks of 5 am starts. It makes any sleep clinic intervention hopeless - they always think they've cracked the problem and then she reverts. I've done all the usual things with blinds, naps and whatnot. I've wondered whether it's related to developmental leaps.

I stress so much that I'm reinforcing this by getting up with her (more or less have to to stop her waking DD1) and creating a bad habit for life.

I feel your pain.

DS1 always got up at the crack of dawn and we tried the going to bed later (worked for a bit); earlier (no difference); black out blinds (no difference).

DS2 (19mo) is usually up between 5 and 6 am and the only thing that I have changed this time is that I go to bed earlier (sometimes at 8.30 on a working day). I think that my days have been turned on their head so I expect to be up early. It really is the only way I can cope with such early mornings.

The only bad news I have is that it hasn't really changed with DS1 (but at least now he understands that he has to play in his room for a bit).

They both went to bed at 9.30pm last night (family gathering) and yet DS1 was still up at 6.15 am. DS2 slightly later but he will have a long morning nap.

EC - I don't think you are reinforcing anything. You just have early birds.

ds1 does this - he is 3.5 and doesn't give a stuff what his clock says. He gets up, and sneaks around the house. Some mornings we don't hear him and find him in the kitchen, in the lounge watching tv with the sodnd

sorry - laptop froze!!! Tv with the sound on low, or messing about in the bathroom.

Short of putting a lock in his door i don't know what to do! We're tried reward charts, praise, shouting I'm not a heavy sleeper but he's so quiet and sneaky.

He's always been an early riser, up at 6am but now we find him in various rooms at 5am. We've stopped him drinking anything after teatime so he doesn't need the toilet but nothing is working. I'm worried he'll hurt himself in the kitchen, or do something daft or break things. He's shattered by the end of the week and falls asleep on the couch at lunchtime.

Thank god I'm not alone!!!!! Getting up between 5 and 6 actually feels normal for me now...had glitter and paint out at 7.45 this morning!!! :-) I've started feeling guilty since going bk to work so it feels quite reassuring to know that she's so pleased to so me...whatever time in the morning it is!!! As long as the kettle's switched on I'm prepared to put up with 5-6 o clock start time
for the time being

Ds gets up at 5 fairly regularly. Dd used to sleep until 7 but ds has eroded her good routine. he is almost fucking 5

We bought a tv and dvd player for our bedrooms and both DS1 and later DS2 watched that when they woke up at some hideous hour.
DS1 (5) still wakes up at 6.10, but we showed him how to use the sky and he just watches tv til we get up.

Ds1 learning to read has moved my morning wake up from 5 am to 530-45 (DD2s normal time). DS1 pads across to the light and buries himself in his latest book, oh the bliss. But we did have 5+ years of 5 am starts to get to this point. Threads on teaching toddlers notwithstanding, I am sorely tempted to teach DD2 to read just to hasten the day they can both amuse themselves till 6....

I give dd (23mo) milk in her room in the dark and put her back in her cot, generally she falls asleep for another hour. DH and I get up for work at 6.20, on the odd occassion that dd wakes at 6 she comes into our bed for some stories until it's time to get up.

At the weekends we take it in turns to get up with her as she's not old enough to distinguish between a work day and non-work day.

I go to bed at 9pm, and am always asleep by 10. Otherwise I would be a complete wreck.