2 year old getting up too early. Any tips?

[hanzful]

Hi - My 2 year ild is getting up at 5.30am and wandering round the house. I'm worried for his lack of sleep and also that he will repeatedly walk into his baby brother's room and wake up him up. Anyone got any ideas?
Thanks

i'm afraid my answer is get up too!

clock change on Saturday - put him to bed a bit later on Sat evening, and he'll wake up later, as if by magic

probably.

Perhaps the change of time will help?

I'm up at half five every morning too with DD, its just the way it is sometimes. Once they get to 4 or 5 it may be safe for them to go down on their own for a while but not at 2 really

i'm up every morning at 5.30 just lately its been 4.30 and that with all 3ds, once one is up they all wake up. it doesnt seem to make any difference if they go to bed earlier or later.

I'm just waiting for them to 'grow out of it' or a mirical cure

We had this with our dd and it began to really get us down. 5am is just too early a wake up for all concerned. In the end, we bought one of these and it has been fantastic. We set the alarm and our little girl is happy to either sit in bed, looking at books, playing for a while, or, even better, falls back to sleep for a while and then greets us with a very excited, "The sun is on my clock!" at an appropriate time, set by us. Quite pricey but oh so worth it!

My 2.7 yr old ds gets up at similar time and has done since he was about 11 months old although there have been the odd phase of waking up at 8am but mainly it has been in between 5 and 6 for well over a year now. I am afraid I just get up with him. I have tried putting him to bed an hour later at 8pm but he still gets up at the same time and then is really over tired and grumpy the next day. He seems to get more wound up and hyper the less sleep he has so he is then really hard to get to bed the next night. I have found on occassions that putting him to bed half an hour EARLIER at 6:30 has in fact (not sure how!) made him miraculousy sleep through til 7am! I think the later they go to bed often the earlier they wake!

I've always been of the belief that if its before 7am its the middle of the night and I treat any waking before then as I would if it was middnight!!! But then I am evil if I don't get enough sleep so for my sanity there is no way on this earth I would get up at 5.30am!!! My friend swears by a bunny clock and I would also use a reward chart so for every morning he stays in bed until 7am he gets a star and if he gets 5 stars he can choose a small gift - until the habit is broken. I think if I were you I would next time he wakes up early, check that its not a wet nappy that is bothering him (my dd always hated feeling wet) and offer a drink of water or milk and then keep putting him back to bed, it will prob take quite a few attempts but he will eventually get the msg and in theory you would only have to do this a couple of mornings before he breaks the habit!!!

I think it is a question of sleep cycles, and that if you get them down earlier, weirdly, they sleep later, because when they come into their last light sleep phase it is still dark and therefore they drop off back to sleep again. If they've gone down later that light phase coincides with dawn and they're up.
My sympathies, 5am is still the night shift and an horrific time to have to get up, especially if you also have a baby to deal with for the rest of the day. Hope you take it in turns xxx
(we occasionally get this with our 2 year old, we ignore him completely and have a latch on the outside of his door so he doesn't walk around and injure himself. He usually bumbles about in his room and nods off back to sleep)

Put a gate at his door. We had the same with DS1 and ended up getting a DVD player in our room and a chair and he used to watch DVD's whilst we slept. 5am is not morning!

We do what zapostrophe does - if it's too early (beofre 7 on a weekday, before 8 at the weekend) we say "not time to get up yet. Go back to bed" and they do (DTs, 3.5yo) I'm also for early bedtimes - usually in bed by 7pm. When they were tiny, our health visitor was a big advocate of "the more they sleep, the better they sleep" and it's always seemed to work for us. I guess I'm just lucky.

[laughs at girliefriend]
sorry, but you obviously had compliant DC. DS woke at 4:30am from 12mo to 18mo. utter torture. NOTHING worked. We were wrecks.

2yo's don't understand reason or bloody reward charts

Thanks though!

I'm lucky to have a child that sleeps well now, but remember seeing people raving about 'wake to sleep' method. It does involve you getting up EVEN EARLIER for a few days, the idea is that you rouse them just a little which then actually sends them into deeper sleep - see here. Perhaps worth a shot...?

My dd is not compliant (unfortunately!!) but I am strict when it comes to sleep! 4.30am - is the middle of the night!!!! I would be in the loony bin if I had got up at this time for 6 months!!! xXx