Big boy bed and nighttime/early wakings driving us mad!

[Starlight17]

Hi first post so please go easy on me. We have a 3 year old DS who transitioned to a big boy bed just before his 3rd birthday. All went well initially he was super happy and excited. Cue his move to the pre-school room at nursery and his sudden realisation that he can get out of bed whenever he likes and we’ve had night time visits at 3am and early wake ups (5.30am is a lie in) ever since. Now we’ve tried the whole putting him back to bed without interaction saying it’s still night time etc and he continues to get out of bed every 20 mins from 5am. In the night we’ve had some success getting him straight back to sleep but other nights he gets up consistently until early hours or until DH goes the sleeps on his bedroom floor which DS says the next morning he doesn’t like but it does get him back to sleep as it stops him getting out of bed! DS is exhausted the next day falling asleep at tea time and so are we. We’ve experimented with his naps, no nap, nap cut to 1 hour/or only 30 mins and nap every 3 days etc but nothing seems to be working. He had 2x nights of sleeping through last week and those were both nap days but on other nap days at the same time he wakes up so I can’t find any pattern. All of this is making DH and I, stressed and snappy and it’s really not good for our relationship or DH’s concentration the next day when he’s so tired. I’ve also tried wake to sleep at 2am but it usually wakes him up fully. I’ve also tried turning off hot water timer etc to make sure it’s not that waking him up and covering him with duvet when we go to bed to make sure he’s not cold. Also tried a snack before bed etc. Has anyone been through anything similar and can help us get back on track? I know we probably have to ride this one out but any tips to help us all get a bit more sleep would be welcomed,

Ds was like this , we put a baby gate on his door . Our door was open so that we could hear if he needed us.
We also got him a gro clock so that helped with the early waking , he would be told to play quietly in his bedroom until the clock changed colour.
The night wakings we would do the supernanny method of putting him back into bed with no interaction.
It worked ....for a while
Now ds is 6 he gets in with me every night but at least he sleeps now!

DD moved to big bed in the summer and it's awful! Multiple get ups throughout the night and we're in a similar situation with naps where we can't seem to get it right. We've stuck a baby gate on the door so DD can't just come in to us and we've seen an improvement in the night waking as the months have gone on but the clock change has ruined us with the early starts.

This happened to us with my older one - I put a stair gate on his door (had to get an extra tall one so he couldn’t climb over!). After howling at the gate at 3.30 am few nights on the trot he gave up and started sleeping through again.

My ds is on holiday with his dad but I was still up at 6 am so as you can see its had a lasting effect on me lol

We had to put a baby gate on, the temptation to get out of bed and roam about was too strong for DS.

DS started this again in the summer, he's 4, so we put the baby gate back on and after one more early waking and some screaming when he discovered he couldn't leave his room it stopped.

@Disappointedkoala glad to hear I’m not alone! None of my friends with same age children are going through this yet so it’s nice to be able to speak to people who might understand. I’ve been thinking about putting a baby gate on his door and I’m not against it at all was just saving it as a last resort which I think we are at now. Thank you

@Dontforgetyourbrolly thank you for your tips. I tried the gro clock and it made him worse - he’s sleeps in a completely dark room and the dim light from the clock was waking him up even more then he told me he didn’t like it! He’s also at that age where he finds things scary and with Halloween coming up and then talking about scary things in pre-school I don’t think it’s helping.

@Gulpingcoffee @CoffeeandKitKat thanks for your help you’ve booth suggested baby gates on the bedroom door worked for you so think we will have to give it a go. I wouldn’t even mind him sleeping in bed with us at this stage but in the past when I’ve let him he just won’t go to sleep and wants to chat and play so it’s even worse!

DS is a bit younger but he has a stair gate (he’s in a loft conversion so needed one anyway) and it works really well. I can hear him chatting away to himself now. He’ll shout for me when he’s actually ready to come downstairs.

The gro clock was a slow burner , it took about a month to be successful!

@Dontforgetyourbrolly I know what you mean I still woke up at 5am today expecting him to get up when he didn’t get up until 5.30am! I know once your body clock gets set to that time it’s hard to break the cycle. He slept well in his cot but don’t want to resort back to the cot unless we have to - no new baby on the way or another other reason to at the moment. Just hoping he gets used to staying in bed and maybe baby gate will help.

@Dontforgetyourbrolly silly question but where do you position the gro clock? I put it opposite his bed so he could see it but might be worth putting it to the side?

I put it up on a shelf that was conveniently placed near the door, so that he could only really see it if he got out of bed ( if he was lying in bed he would be looking at it " side on" iyswim)
There are lots of differing brightness settings etc and I think you can program it to only light up in the morning etc
However you may need a physics degree to get to grips with the thing !!!
Anyway if he got up and clock was still dark he would play in his room ( remember to take away the noisy toys !) Then the clock would light up and he would call out "its yellow!" And we all knew it was time to get up .that was 6.35 and can u believe that was what we would call a success haha

@Dontforgetyourbrolly Thank you it might be worth us trying to put it out of sight so that he has to get up to see it rather than him opening his eyes and seeing it next to him - anything is worth a try!

We didn’t want a Gro Clock for the same reason - we wanted a dark room. We bought an Alexa smart plug and a night light which rotates through rainbow colours. We can turn the light on remotely via an app or our Echo dot. When “magic light” comes on, it’s morning and he can come out. If magic light is off, it’s night and he must stay in his room. The benefit of this is that we have total control over when the light turns on without having to enter the room or set timers.

We’ve only been doing it a week or so. It’s had a reasonable but not perfect success rate, although he normally doesn’t find out before 6.30/40. We always put him back in his room and make him wait at least 5-10 mins before magic light comes on and he’s allowed out. Might be worth a try.

@FizzingWhizzbee123 will look into this as we thought about using the Alexa and a smart light bulb to turn his lamp on but this might be more subtle! Please let me know your progress with this