Toddler wakes at 4.30am

[Ariadne08]

My 19 month old wakes most days at 4.30am, and has done for months. Some days it’s 5.00am, which frankly I count as a lie in at this point.

We have tried:

Putting him to bed later (he wakes up at the usual time anyway)

Putting him to bed earlier (not usually possible as he tends to go down between 7.00-7.30pm anyway)

Giving him a bigger dinner

Giving him pudding

We have blackout curtains and extra blackout window liners so the room is very dark. He is appropriately dressed for the temperature of the room. I have a bed guard on my and DH’s bed so I can bring him into bed with me and nurse him on those early mornings - he will very occasionally fall back asleep.

He naps for around two hours during the day, but even having a much shorter nap seems to have no impact on his night’s sleep. He is a lovely and very active boy who is on the go all day.

I’ve accepted at this point he’s just an early bird, but today he woke at 4.10am which is just so early. There was a long period in the depths of winter when he woke at 4.15am, absolutely brutal.

Did anyone experience anything similar? Did you manage to overcome it?

It’s bloody awful.

Mine wasn’t as bad - it was generally 5-530 - but the effect it had on me was horrible. I was so tired all the time, always felt headachey and out of it. It isn’t just waking early, it’s waking early with a toddler which is the killer.

I was like you and tried everything and for us it only stopped when DS dropped his nap which happened at around two and a half, (I tried to enforce dropping the nap but it didn’t work when I forced it, it had to come from him I think.)

Thank you for replying @justgoandgetpizza. It’s so tough isn’t it! My friend has a toddler the same age as my son, and sleeps 7pm-7am - I can’t imagine it!

I'm glad things got better for you in the end. I think we may have to play the waiting game, and hope things improve in time.

Could you try a gro clock? Might not be old enough yet but you could give it a go. It has an owl that changes colour at a morning time you set. You can gradually change the time back in 5 minute increments. It teaches them to go back to sleep when it’s still night time.

Solidarity here we have always had a mega early riser! It makes the day/morning soooooo long!!

Since dropping his nap he usually manages 7pm til 5am but I can't remember the last time he slept beyond 530am so have just had to accept this is who he is 🙈🙈😱😱

He's not miserable or anything so not much to do about it apart from MAINLINE THE COFFEE

My toddler sometimes wakes early 4.30 ish and sometimes will have a really long lie in till 8! Obviously never lies in on day when I could i Iie in too. When he wakes up before 6 I just leave him babbling to himself for an hour, sometimes he goes back to sleep. If he wakes up crying I try and settle him back to sleep. But that never works! And I can't bring him into our bed cause he just gets super excited!
Can you leave him happly babbling?

I had one that woke at 4am for a while. I remember once it was 3.57am and I cried as it was so ridiculously early. I tried changing everything and it made no difference. I resigned myself to the fact it was some kind of developmental thing. It sorted it's self out on its own and now he wakes at 6.30am. Sometimes it makes you feel better to try things to change it, sometimes it helps to just accept it and know it will change at some point. It's still crap though.

I'll look into getting one. Thanks for the tip @Ketryne - I’ll give anything a go at this point!

House of early wakers here, I'm sure it's hereditary my mum gets up at 5 and she's retired!
If I see it's 6am, that's late for us, some of my friends are waking theirs up at 7.30! It does get better but it is brutal. Have you thought of a tonie box, I go into their rooms don't say a word and literally put a figure back on the top of it. I go back to bed if needed and it stops that morning being so long.

Have you tried a snack before bed? Wetabix or porridge sort of thing?

And how long did you try shorter naps or later bedtimes for? You need to give it a go from at least a week to see if it has any affect. We discovered tea had to be later to get a later bedtime to work - so if it's usually food at 5, bed at 7 you need food at 6, bed at 8.

Grow clock worked for us.
I was advised to first give him an easy win so he gets familiar to the concept and rewarded with praise for staying in bed until the sun comes up. So if he's waking at 4.30, set the clock at 4.45 or 5. When he wakes just point at the clock and explain you both need to stay in bed until the sun appears. You might need to take him back to bed several times. Then when the sun comes up, he gets praised for waiting and you can start the day. Then once he understands and stays in bed waiting for the sun, you can start moving the waking time later.
He has had the odd regressions but on the whole the grow clock has been enormously helpful. Def worth a try.

It’s hard and exhausting, but nothing helped us until DD just grew out of it.

My DC went through a phase of this and it was grim. It did gradually get better but it’s hard.

Don’t bother with a Gro Clock at that age they don’t understand it.

If recommend speaking to a sleep consultant. Ask around for recommendations.

Yep! This was my second child (now nearly 23). He does have ADHD (as do I and I get up at 4am). He did go through the teenage staying in bed til later but even that was more like 10/11am rather than the 1/2 pm that many teenagers achieve 🤣. He's still a relatively short sleeper now like me. 6-7 hours and he's done. Tbh I found that I had to just wait it out until he was older enough to sort himself for a bit. Nothing made him sleep and he gave up a nap at 12 months old.

My eldest was like this, we tried the groclock he just "played " in his room till the sun came on but the playing wakes you up anyway. In the end when he started school he naturally changed his wake time and woke at 6am. He was in full time nursery before this. Now he is 10 and it's an effort to get him up for school on time

Mine was the same, nothing really worked I'm afraid it was just a very long phrase and then he grew out of it. Mine just has a low sleep needs. I did/do find that when they're over tired he actually work up earlier and his behaviour was more difficult, so now I'm strict on bedtime. We do use a gro clock (and did from around the 2 year mark - he's going towards 4 now). I wouldn't expect them to understand it at 19 months but you could use it as best practice. They need a really strong understanding of not just colours but following simple instructions as well. As a parent you need to be realistic, there's no point setting until 7:30 and just expecting them to comply. My 'goal' time at 2 was 6am so I increased it by around 5-10mins every few weeks. I also made sure he had some quiet simple toys that I'd made look enticing on their bedroom floor e.g half built jigsaw, blocks, water pen books alongside a yoto so he had stories to listen to. Again be realistic with the age, mine can play alone for around 20-25 mins at his age now back then it was more 10-15 mins if he had got into something. You get through it and wonder how you survived but you do get there!

We found we needed to aggressively cap his nap around 2/2.5 otherwise he’d wake up super early. Have you persevered with a later bed time / shorter / no nap? It takes a while for their wake up time to adjust (it doesn’t happen straight away). I feel for you, it’s awful xx

I feel for you, it’s so draining. But it will get better. Nothing helped for us until DS grew out of it. I remember being so greatful when once he slept in until 6am, felt like Xmas.

The biggest thing that helped me was accepting that this was the reality for right now (not easy at first). So I tried to adapt as much as possible, so going to bed much earlier, having some nice breakfast bits and coffee in. Books that were page tuners on my Kindle that didn’t require too much brain power, which I could skim read whilst DS was watching cartoons.

Also if you have a partner we sometimes used to ‘split the difference’ so I’d be up from 4.30 to 6. Then go back to bed from 6 - 7.30 before then having to get up for the day. Or vice versa.

I would move the bedtime later, you say you've tried it already but since your child is used to waking up so early, it would take multiple tries. This helped us with our daughter a lot.
At this age, children have less sleep needs if they nap. Both of mine slept around 9 hours at night max, so often even 8.5 hours (rarely less). We got used to 9 pm bedtime.
Most countries and cultures have later bedtime.

I had one like this and it was brutal. Id have to have two breakfasts to get through the day one at 5 and one at 8. He woke at 357 on the day of my best
friends wedding and I sobbed about how id get through it. I tried everything-nothing worker except time. Hes still an early riser now but not as extreme. Then i had one who slept till 10am-not joking) gro clock saved me. He rarely went back to sleep. BUT him babbling quietly to himself and me dozing or just having 30 mins to come round quietly with noone touching me or making demand did help. Like the PP start small. Once older make mornings boring. My friend had one like this and they’d make pancakes and be baking by 5am-so of course they want to be up. I made it dull-and also kept myself sane. Lazy quiet coffee drenched.

The reason they ‘grow out of it’ is because eventually they drop their nap. Daytime sleep (or the balance of it) has a massive impact on nighttime sleep.

I’d cut his daytime nap by half an hour, waking him up if necessary, and give it two weeks to see if it works. You can’t say a shorter nap doesn’t have any impact unless you’ve given it time.

My DD was on barely any daytime sleep from about 18 months but she slept 13 hours a night. Before that, she was waking at 4.30am every day.

I'm another who would try shortening the nap, pushing back bedtime, and sticking with the new schedule for at least a week, maybe two.

I don’t know how long you’ve tried anything for before but you need at least 2 weeks for them to adjust to the change before declaring it does/doesn’t work. So cap the nap, do a later bedtime and stick with it. Also YY to a gro clock and making it achievable ie set it for 15 minutes after his typical wake time then gradually inch it forwards but he might need to be more like 2 to understand it properly so perhaps something to consider if you’re still struggling in a few months.

Also this is left field and I realise it’s not exactly something you can do tomorrow but just throwing it out there because my DS was v similar at that age and was completely cured by a long haul holiday. Something about having the routine completely messed up and the time zone shift was like a hard reset and enabled him to get (and stay) on a more normal schedule when we got home of bed at 7.30 and wake up at 6.

All I can say is shortening the nap for us made no difference - he was just mega grumpy! I’m also not sure a Gro clock would be effective at this age; it would be fine for my DS now to encourage him to stay in his room a bit longer but all DD (nearly 2) would do would be to cry until I went into her.

I am definitely not advocating doing nothing; try by all means but it is also possible to drive yourself mad trying to fix it and sometimes just easier to go with it. It is the pits though I agree, I hated it when DS did this.

Oh, I’ve totally been there! That crazy sleep schedule and those super early wake-ups are so tough.Here’s a tip I got from a my nanny, (who used to be a maternity nurse) it helped a ton with my second child (after struggling with my first!). It’s called gentle nap capping, basically, toddlers sleep differently than us they have more light sleep, so it’s easy for them to wake up fully during naps. So, even if you’ve tried shortening naps, you could gently try limiting his morning nap to 1.5 hours for a few days. See if that makes him more ready for a longer night’s sleep.It’s a bit of a balancing act because you don’t want him too tired, but it’s a common trick for those early risers!

Mine dropped her nap about 18 months and still got up at 5 till she was 13 (22 now). I look back and can't quite believe we lived like that.

We tried everything, didn't change a thing.