Early Riser.....HELP

[Maidment]

My 2 year and 2 months old has always been an erratic sleeper. He has always been good at going down in the evening but has always been an early riser. I have always been able to handle anything after 6am but recently he is waking up at 5am every morning and just crying in his room until I go and get him. He doesn't have any daytime sleep anymore and goes to bed at 7pm. I have tried putting him down later/blackout blinds/leaving him to cry and nothing seems to work.....He is in a junior bed so can get out of bed and play if he wants to but he just cries.

Any advice/ideas welcome. I am exhausted.

Not enough sleep perhaps. Sounds odd, but putting him to bed earlier may help. Around 5am is a "light sleep" time for most people. A toddler who is waking at that time is probably having sleep disturbances for some reason. A very common reason is overtiredness. Being overtired causes children to have too much adrenaline in their bodies, which causes wakefulness and irritability.

7pm to 5am doesn't sound like a lot of sleep for a 2 year old, especially since he's not napping at all. I would suggest moving bedtime forward by about 15 minutes a day until you get to 6pm and see how things are after a couple of weeks.

Most children need about 12 hours sleep a day. If your child has been sleep deprived for a while, it may take a while for this to work. He shouldn't wake any earlier though. It's not how the body clock works.

A great book for sleep issues is Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Dr Marc Weissbluth. He has done extensive sleep studies in children.