2 and a half year old waking up at 5.30am every day!

[IA71]

Is there anything I can do to make him sleep longer? He does go back to sleep but only after I have got up to reassure him. This then wakes up my 6 month old so I am very tired! Any tips? He has a fixed bedtime of 7.30pm.

Thanks in advance.

Well tbh it sounds normal to me - I counted my blessings if ds ever slept past 6 am at that age. Tbh he has had 10 hours sleep already by then so it's getting near time to wake up. Not much you can do other than what you are doing already.

Gro clock. Seriously, it's fab. DS turned 2 in June and went into big bed, we regressed to 4.30 wake ups and then couldn't get past 5.15. Bought Groclock and have been steadily extending the time. I was worried he'd be too young but he loves it when he's slept til "mr sun" (probably aided by the sticker /choc button he gets when he manages it!!).
It's now rare he wakes before 6, which is fine with me.

Very best of luck, that extra half hour/hour makes such a difference.

i am a bad and evil parent I have a tv and dvd player especially because of this - it is used solely for if DD gets up at a ridiculous time to keep her quiet and on Fri and Sat night to watch a film (her and DS)

Gro clock, increase in 10 minute increments

I feel your pain.
DS2 is 2 and a half too and since 10 months old, has woken up between 5am and 5.30am every day, every bloody day.
I wish I knew what the solution is. Seriously, it's knackering. I'm hoping he'll grow out of it.

I told my dd (one of twins, her sister loves her sleep) it was too early and that she had to go back to bed - she got the message after a little while! I also bought a glo clock, gave them supper before bed and got warmer bedding - that's how desperate I was for better sleep. They are 3 now and often sleep until 8, I think you have to train them on how you want them to sleep, they will still get up early on occassion, but if it's before 7 I give them a quick cuddle and tell them to go back to bed and it usually works!

If I cuddle DS2 and tell him to go back to sleep, he screams the house down!

My dd screamed for the first couple of times, but soon realised that I meant it when I just kept calmly putting her back. Not saying it works for everyone, but worked with her. Lack of sleep was killing me at the time so I persevered.

tbh, I now go to bed at 9.30pm knowing that DD will wake at 5.30am and I need my sleep. We have tried putting her down later, and/or coaxing her back to sleep at 5.30am (which always causes mega meltdowns and tantrums all round).
I use the time to empty dishwasher and potter about downstairs now. She has done this for the last 18 months so we have all got used to it now :-)

One suggestion is to bring his bedtime forward. Sounds crazy but the later my DD (3) goes to bed the earlier she wakes. We have let bedtime slip recently and when she went to bed at 8.30pm after much complaining, she woke up at 5.30am! I've tried this experiment a few times so maybe a 7pm bedtime might help. My aim is to get DD into bed and asleep by 7.15pm at the latest and hopefully this will prevent further 5.30am wake-ups. I know how awful it is and I feel very ill disposed towards DH and DD on those days as I am left feeling rotten by lack of sleep. Give it a try.

Watching with interest.

We're tackling our 13 month old's waking in the night. It's gradually improving (only 2 wake ups last night!) but now he wakes at 6am and although today I treated his 5.45am wakeup like a night wakeup (quick BF, back in cot shushing and patting) he was wide awake and chatting.

Then he did a poo so I had to change his nappy by which time I was wide awake too .

However as we'd had a "good" night, DH and I decided to do the shred dvd which I've refused to do the last few weeks in the evening as I'm just too knackered. So I feel virtuous

Might look into pushing his bedtime forward but it is hard as his naps are quite irratic. Usually he's asleep by 8, 8.15pm but his nap yesterday afternoon was until 5.45pm so no way would he sleep earlier.

On the plus side, DH and I like being able to play with DS in the morning. We both work FT long hours and in the evening DS is too grumpy to play.

I would be ok with a 6am start if only he stopped waking in the night!

We did experiment with his bedtimes and it worked for a few weeks but then he reverted back to 5.30am again! I think we might try a 7pm bedtime again and see what happens. Thanks for all your advice. We have bought the Gro Clock and shall see if it works. There are over 600 reviews on Amazon so it must work. I'll let you know how it goes...

Good luck.

DS is gradually getting earlier and earlier (he seems to have worked out that we play with him in the morning before work if he gets up early ) so I looked at the gro clock but he's only 13 months so still a bit little I think.

Am going to bring forward his bedtime to see if that helps (it's going to be manic though, literally in the door from work and starting the bath/bed routine)

Did you see the advice on amazon about showing the child the clock and pretending to be asleep with the stars and jumping about all happy when "Mr Sun" appeared? (using demo version I think). I thought that sounded like a good idea.

Definitely the gro clock. DD is now 2.3 and that thing has changed my life. Some days I don't even have to watch Granny chuffing Murray because DD has slept right past Me Too.

We have this. Gro clock didn't work, day begins at 5.15.

5.30 here. Gro clock not working. I resign myself to the early start and try to get to bed early. He will grow out of it. My DD was exactly the same but by 5 was sleeping to 7. Now she is 6 and I have to wake her up on a school day!

Gro clock worked for us, ds1 from 2.5 slept til 6.30 instead of trying to get up at 5. Takes a couple of weeks to work consistently.

We also have a bedtime box for when he regresses. It has small treats in eg magazine, small pot of play-do, book and he gets to choose something if he manages to stay in bed until the sun comes up on the clock for two days in a row. This has been really effective until 3.4 months when I think he cottoned on that if he started getting up early he may be in line for a treat one day, clever boy!

Another vote for Gro Clock here. It worked wonders for us. 2.5 us about old enough to understand what it's all about I think. A friend of mine found it didn't work at first and did some complicated stuff to establish it working - she started off with setting the sun-up time to be approximately the "normal" wake up time and established a system of sticker/toy rewards if DC was still in bed and being quiet at the time the sun came up (this involved some hideously early mornings). Once that was established, the time that the gro-clock was set to was put forward by 5 minutes at a time, so that the rewards were sometimes not earned, but the DC learned slowly that being in bed and quiet at sun-up time led to good things. It never proved quite the miracle for them as it did for us but it certainly made a difference.

We've had sleep issues for six months now (ds1 30mths) including early waking. Just starting with a gro-clock combined with rewards and it's been a bit better.

We have been using the Gro clock for the past few days and it hasn't made any difference. In fact he has been waking even earlier (4am). Any of the mums who used this successfully got any tips?

Takes longer than a few days I believe.

Good luck with the clocks changing tonight!

Pre-dc the autumn clock change was my favourite out of the 2, now I much prefer the spring time one! Friends without children really struggle to understand this!

Use the gro clock plus bribes. We use a sticker per day that DS waits until the sun comes back, 10 stickers is a little prize.

He needs to have motivation to look at the clock and choose to go back to sleep rather than just look at the clock and tell whether there is a sun or stars IFSWIM. It took a little while for DS to get this but then he was pretty good.

Also, once they get out of the habit of getting up at ridiculous o'clock they can sleep longer automatically. We even had 7:10 one day