4 yr old - continuous, obscene EARLY waking... tips from people who have been there...

[cookiemonstress]

Summary version... DD1 wakes early every single day (from 4.45am - 6am) and has done so for much of her life. The problem is that she used to be containable in her room until a more decent hour with the use of gates, toys etc. But now she undoes the gate and I caught her standing on kitchen worktop the other morning try to reach the cereal . Not only that but she is waking her younger sister and really impacting her sleep (who perversely would happily sleep to 8 am given the chance).

DD1 always had very consistent sleep routine. IN bed by 7.30 after bath, story routine. Some issues in past with night waking, coming to our bed but with a bit of rapid return easily addressed.

I have tried the bunny clock, the sleep fairy, light on a timer, she outwits it all. She doesn't seem to need the toilet. She's awake but irritable and bored. In short it's a nightmare and I know dread weekend mornings. We both work and it's wearing us all down. Early in the week is one thing but in the weekend is draining and we ended getting v irritable with her ourselves.

She falls asleep with no issue (in fact it's hard to keep her awake). If she goes to bed later, she wakes even earlier.

Tips anything??!

can you put breakfast things out for her to help herself? Mine at 4 were capable of pouring milk onto their cereal and understood that if they wanted TV on it had to be with volume down

make sure that there is nothing dangerous/poisonous to hand and let her get on with it

HTH

ds1 has done this for most of his life.. He is now 6 and a half and still does. He was singing happy bbirthday to ds2 before 5 this morning. He potters in his room then goes downstairs to watch tv. I have taught him how to make breakfast for himself (cereal with milk)

A while back i moved his bedtime to 8pm and after a few weeks, his monring waking moved to between 6 and 7 - but I thikn I can count on one hand the number f times in his whole life that he has woken later than 6:30. I think some children are just like this.

FWIW, when the clocks go forward,. I am not going to adjust his sleep. He is currently in bed at 7 as is so shattered, so that will be 8 when the clocks go forward

A friend of mine said this morning that she would give her ds1 a #very strict punishment' for waking that early but I do't agree. If I woke at 5 for whatever reason, and could not get back to sleep, I would be furious that someone gave me a 'very strict punishment'. I try to see it from his point of view.

You see - I feel really uncomfortable about the rewards/punishment for sleep thing. Imagine for whatever reason, you woke at 5am. You went to the loo then went back to bed. Then couldn't sleep. Then someone said if you can sleep til 6, you will get x, y and z. So the next morning you wake at five and lie there, desperate for a wee but worried about getting out of bed.

I suffered from insomnia many years ago and not being abe to get back to sleep is the most infuriating thing going

I´m afraid you just have to accept that this is the way she is and teach her how to safely and quietly occupy herself till a reasonable hour.

Having said this my dd tends to get up earlier than normal when she hasn´t eaten well the previous day. Does your dd eat well?

sachertorte - that is a really good point. I always ake sure ds1 has something to eat just before bed - if he doesnt eat much, I think it does impact on his sleep.

He was imrpoving but then we stopped putting him on the loo for a wee when we went to bed - and I wonder whether he wakes for a wee and because it is nearly morining he cant get back to sleep

My son has always woken early (5.30 to 6ish when he was 4 - bit of a lie in now til 6.45!!). It is a killer I know. Can't offer you any tips on getting her to sleep later, ds seems to have an alarm in his head - the clocks going forward (or holidaying in a different timezone) would offer a brief respite, but within a week he'd be back on track. I used to make him a sandwich, give him a drink and stick him in front of a video(we were living abroad at the time - now I'd switch on CBeebies). No prizes for brilliant mothering, but it did give me a sort of lie in so I could start the day feeling vaguely human.

yes ds is like this too, almost 4. at pre-school every morning and with a very energetic cm in afternoons.

i have reluctantly come to realise that 9 hours is his natural sleep time and 10 is a treat. now his bedtime is 8 during the week or 9 at weekends. that is asleep, not starting bath etc.

i'd rather have time to myself in the evening and cope with an earlier morning - i leave for work at 7am - but dh was utterly miserable at 5am waking so this is how we are for now.

DS1 is 11 and still waken any time from 5am onwards. He also sued to waken his brother who woud slepe till after 8am.
We tried everything, and in the end it was easier for everyone to keep him safe, whilst still getting some rest. One of us would come downstairs with him and make him a drinka nd somehting to eat and put tv on. not ideal, but it worked for us. Going to bed later meant ealier rises. We went to a wedding once, we were in a family room at hotel. Got to bed at 1am, DS1 was awake at 4.30!
We ahve never "punished" Ds1 for waking early - although I ahve fetl like it. We thought as he got older it would sort itself out but it hasn't. SIL was the same apparently, until she reached 13, then SMIL said it was like something had been switched on inside her that said "I must sleep later" but then she went to the other extreme!

I'm lucky in that DD has never been an especially early waker, but if she's up before me at a weekend, she entertains herself and gets herself breakfast etc until I get up (she's almost 8 now).

She's been doing this from around 3 or 4 onwards. She knows I'm unlikely to surface early at a weekend and that I'm awful in the mornings, so she's always happily amused herself until I get up. Could you get your DD's breakfast things out the evening before (i.e. a bowl of dry cereal laid out with spoon) so that all she has to do is pour the milk in the morning. Can she work the video/DVD player? If not, perhaps you can teach her, so that she can get up, eat and watch some TV whilst the rest of the household sleeps.

Also, can you try a reward chart type thing for each morning that she gets up nicely without disturbing anyone else? After x number of 'good' mornings, she could choose a reward?

Hi
THanks for all the comments.. good to know that other people in the same boat. The added problem that I have with dd1 is that she has no interest in amusing herself and is not captivated by television in the slightest. Again she has been like this since day 1. Her sister will happily play and amuse herself but genuinely dd1 has never taken herself to play once.

She wakes in the morning and she is at my bedside "mummy, what are we doing today, where are we going?". THis is why she wakes her sister i.e to play with her. She has no interest in any of toys, and only interested in books if someone reads them to her. For her, it's all about experiences. I wonder if it's because she was PFB for 6 months, fed on demand etc. then went to nursery which was stimulating and now is at pre-school all day with wrap around childcare. She loves pre-school because there are 20 activities on offer (including painting and sticking which are the only things she ever shows an interest in).

We try ignoring her but her behaviour will escalate to the point that she is either having a full blown tantrum and waking everyone including the neighbours or is roaming the house. My gut feel is that she is really tired because on the days I can coax her back to sleep she wakes up a different child.

It's a good point about the clocks going forward. I'd like to have a go at resetting her body clock because I think there may be a cap on how long she can sleep which is probably around 10 hours.

It's interesting to compare to her sister. DD2 winds down to go to sleep (sings to herself) and is slow to come to in the mornings. DD1 is asleep before her head hits the pillow and will go from snoring her head off to running round the house with 30 seconds of waking up.

I have tried the reward chart, it seems to loose it's impact after a couple of days.

Oh and I meant to add that she eats really well and healthily, so I don't think it's hunger.

The most effective thing for my DD was a blackout blind. Actually a bit of blackout lining velcroed around the window to totally block the light. I think then when she woke she'd assume it was still the middle of the night. She was nearly 4 when we introduced this.

She also has fairy lights on a timer. The rules being that she's allowed to go to the toilet but other than that she stays in her room until they turn off. She's allowed to play or read in her room. We're not saying she has to sleep. Just not to disturb everyone else. To start off with they were set to 10 mins later than she was getting up anyway, then progressively later.

I think it's luck of the draw as to the kind of child you get (whether they amuse themselves or not), rather than how stimulating their nursery is . DD was at nursery but was always happy to amuse herself and thankfully still is!

Maybe you need to find a week or two (during holidays maybe) where you can put your foot down, be prepared for tantrums for a little while, but refuse point blank to get up when your DD does. If she screams the house down, so be it. She'll probably learn quickly that if mummy or daddy don't get up with her, she'll either have to stay sleeping or amuse herself in some manner. Maybe you could choose a time when your neighbours are away or could warn them in advance to get earplugs?

I think with my DD, she's always known that there's really not much point in waking me up in the morning at the weekend, since I'm like a bear with a sore head and deeply resentful of being awoken when it's the only time I have to catch up on my sleep. Therefore, she's always been happy to potter about on a Saturday moring and let me lie in.

HTH

blackouts might help, my ds is a long sleeper in the winter but has recently started waking up earlier and earlier. He does just go downstairs and stick the telly on though, so this is sort of ok, although not looking forward to May Morning...

I am sure you said in earlier post, but how old is your dd? I think this all changes with age

I have this every day. Ds always says he is hungry so won't go back to bed (and it doesn't matter how much he has eaten the day before). I get up, go downstairs with him, make his breakfast, put Cbeebies on if it is 6am or a dvd if it is earlier, and go back to bed. I tell him to come and get me if he needs help but now he seems to give me a couple of hours extra kip (he's 4.5).

Cookie, is your dd OVERstimulated? And so perhaps too tired to sleep, with her non-stop daily activities whirling round her head stopping her from sleeping? She seems to have a very busy life and to be offered a lot of different things to do. Imo, such small children (is she 4?) should be more involved in imaginative play and make long elaborate games out of more or less nothing... I know my dd had terrible sleep problems as a baby and I only FINALLY realised it was due to sleeping too little, I just never realised how much sleep she needed. www.silentnights.org was really invaluable to me and could give you some pointers too.

A shame your dd won´t watch tv, mine is the same!

thanks for tip re: silentnights.org. I think overstimulation does have something to do with it. She is constantly processing everything. Her minds appears to be going 100 mph constantly.
I bought the millpond sleep clinic book recently and they recommend the lamp on the timer. I've been trying this and she keeps fiddling with it but this morning she was awake and it caught her by surprise, so I am hoping she gets the gist now.

She does have blackout curtains and often she'll wake 5am in the winter so I don't think it's a light issue.

I need to probably work on getting her to stay in her room and amuse herself more because the sleep thing is so hard to control. THe amusing herself issue is another thread in herself. She wants to be with people all the time and she just doesn't get imaginative play. I never see her role play in the way her sister does. The only things she show any interest in doing is painting and sticking (but not pencils and colouring in) and cbeebies on the computer but not the tv. none of which she can do unattended at 6am.

I have the same issue with ds2 (so no its not a PFB thing - he is just an extrovert!) He's now 5.4 and is getting much better at amusing himself in the mornings.
However, we have alwasy been very consistent and rather strict about this issue - ok yes its not his fault that he is a lark, but we all have to live together and therefore my view is that he has to learn to cope with this such that it doesn't impact on the rest of the family.
We've never allowed him into our room before 'getting up time' (which has varied depending on what is realistically achievable but has never been earlier than 6.30). We've used the light on the timer in combination with starchart/rewards for as long as I can remember - certainly since he was 3. We've also always had a later bedtime for him than his older brother (relative to age) - effectively he has the same bedtime at 2 years younger. We've also always had extreme blackout and this does really help.
We still go through good and bad phases - but we have never budged on the line that he has to stay in his room and be quiet until getting up time. One of his Christmas presents was a cool new alarm clock for example, and now he can knows what time he is waiting for (anything after 7...)

It is getting much much better, I think mainly because he is getting better at keeping himself occupied. I think once he can read independently that will also help.
I still fully expect to be woken before 6 when we're on our summer holiday though...