Please help with my 16 MO early riser!!

[MrsLevinson]

My 16M old DS has started waking at 5 every morning and I am getting desperate as I cannot cope with the constant early mornings!

Until a few weeks ago he would go to bed at 6.30 and sleep through until 7-7.30 but now he's awake 5-5.30 and ready to play.

I have tried the following:

Feeding supper last thing before bed to make sure he's not hungry.
Limiting daytime naps (but he only has an hour anyway).
Putting him to bed later at night.
Lots of exercise during the day in an attempt to tire him out.

Any suggestions! I am desperate and so tired!!

You won't want to hear it but there's nothin that worked with my DC.
I go to bed early and cross my fingers!

Ds1 went through it and only stayed in bed (not asleep) when I got him a digital clock and taught him the number 6 added to reward charts.
Ds2 doesn't get reward charts and gets up anytime from 4.30

Today was 6.15 so maybe there's hope? Probably not though and he'll be back to 5ish tomorrow.

I've given in and bring him downstairs to play quietly or watch tv as I don't want him waking everyone else. With ds1 I was stricter and ha a stairgate on his room and he wasn't allowed out until 6, god I was strict back then

Thanks JKS I was afraid somebody would tell me there's nothing I can do. I guess what I struggle with is the fact that he was sleeping through till gone 7 and now suddenly this!
Guess I'll just have to start going to bed even earlier then.

What happens if you put him back in his bed repeatedly and tell him its not morning yet and leave him to it?

Purple he cries and cries until he's hysterical. I always get him up before that point so he doesn't wake DD.
If he wakes earlier in the night he will accept it's not time to get up and goes back down without a fuss. It just seems that now he's decided 5am is waking up time.

Is he definitely getting enough sleep during the day? DS is like this when he hasn't had enough nap time the day before.

Alternatively, it may just be a stage that your DC is going through. DS was like this for about a month and then seemed to suddenly switch back to sleeping until 0630 (big improvement). We didn't seem to change anything, it was just a stage....

DD has been a early waker (anything between 4 and 5.30) since about 9 months. She's now 18 months and shows no sign of growing out of it. She now seems to be in the 18 month sleep regression, and we're beyond desperate.

NOTHING has worked for DD, sorry OP.

I think he is getting enough sleep, lately he just has an hour's nap late morning and he just doesn't seem tired the rest of the day.

That's promising though Cairnterrier, maybe it is just a phase, fingers crossed.

All that helped with ours was a clock which shows when it's time to get up and training them to stay in their rooms til then. That was pretty awful though and they still sing loudly and crash around until it's time to get up.

Hopefully yours is just a phase and will go back to sleeping later. Mine have always been early birds and I think will stay that way.

Sorry to hear that MissHonkover, 4am is grim. I hope it gets better for you.
I didn't know there was an 18m sleep regression, does this mean he's going to get worse? Oh god.

I've just checked my sleep book, and it's unusual for a child that age to sleep as long as 13.5 hours in total day and night, so I would suggest that you accept that he doesn't need this much sleep any more, and put him to bed a bit later. Then he should wake up later.

You could try pushing his bedtime back by 15mins a day until you get to a wake up time that suits you better?

Thanks Dusty I will definitely get a clock when he's old enough to understand. We did that for DD and on the rare occasions that she's awake before 7 we do have to listen to her singing Xmas Carols through the wall. Until now when we're up anyway with DS!
How does everyone with early risers cope with the lack of sleep? I'm like a zombie.

Our DS was a little older when we introduced a gro-clock. He hated it to start with, and would wake up during the night and argue with it. But it did eventually help us to shift his sleeping time so that he went to bed later and woke up later.

I've just spotted that your DS is also having an hour's sleep in the day. 14.5 hours sleep is off the charts for his age, so this is just a normal adjustment. Put him to bed later.

IsItMeOr - thank you for that. It makes sense. I'll put him to bed a bit later tonight and keep my fingers crossed.

I keep XPosting.
I'll look into a groclock too, sounds good.

I suppose I've been comparing him to my
DD who is 4 and needs loads of sleep. But she's at school which will be tiring her out so probably needs more.

Me and DP alternate mornings, so we feel like zombies every second day. There's definitely a cumulative effect though, hope your DS gets through this quickly!

Sorry for a smallish hijack, but IsItMeOr, can you look in your book to see what an 18 month old should be getting?

I just try to have naps at the weekend and don't attempt anything too mentally taxing. It is hideous though. I will take my revenge when they are teenagers by hoovering their bedrooms at 7am

Thanks everyone for all the good advice. Glad I posted.

My DD age 5.5 has always been an early riser, as I am.

5am in the summer is fine but during the winter it's mind-numbing.
I used to go to bed early so that I wasn't too tired, I did used to get a bit resentfull at an 8.30pm bedtime.

I'm sorry that isn't much help to you.
My struggle wasn't withh DD but with xh who refused to get up much before 8am. Apart from occasional weekends.

I too am lookin forward to the 7am hoovering sessions!
Or opening their curtains and singing in a very cheerful voice: rise & shine it's a beautiful day!!

Tried various groclocks/rabbit clock didn't work.

Ds1 did just seen to grow out of it, also started sch that helped.
Ds2 is at f-t school but still hasn't helped.

I am tired most of the time do have lots of early nights & the occasional nap but mostly you do seem to get used to it.
When dh is here we alternate mornings.

Hi Miss Honkover - the book I'm looking at says average at 18mo is 11 and 5/8 hours (what even is that?!) in total, usually split between 9 and 5/8 at night and one two hour nap in the day.

I'll just go and look at the numerous other sleep books we have and see if they say something similar!

Ha! I've just realised that the book I was instinctively drawn too gives lower figures than the others (DS seems to need less sleep than average, and this book makes me feel like he's less abnormal ).

The others are less specific about age bands, but between 1 and 2 years it drops from 13-14 total hours of sleep to 13 hours, and down to 1 nap a day.

Just checked another one, and it says 12-13 hours total sleep for 1-2 years, so closer to the first book I mentioned. Those who follow the Sears or Ferber schools may be interested to know that these two books agree on one thing at least .

These are averages of course, and the most detailed book I have gives a range of 11-15 hours of total sleep for 2 year olds (and 12-15.5 for 1 years olds). So you can see that there's a lot of variation.

The lesson we learnt, which I'm hoping to share, is that it may not be possible for your DC to sleep longer any more, and you could avoid some heartache for all of you by thinking about when you would like that more limited sleep to happen rather than trying to stretch it out.

Agree there is a limit to how much a child will sleep in 24hrs, however, its also about getting the right balance between day & night sleep. A child of 16months old will struggle with overtiredness if the nap is too short.

Something I wanted to add is that the EW could be down to his daytime nap being at the wrong time of day. I noticed you said he has a 1hr nap, late morning - can you tell me at what time? If he's having an early nap then he is likely to need an earlier bedtime than if he were napping at say 12 or 1pm, and this means you get caught in a cycle of early wake, early nap, early bed. Second to this, if he's having an early nap at say 11am, and its only 1 hour long, then he will most likely be overtired by bedtime at 6.30pm, which can itself lead to early waking.

PP's are right in that if you want a later wakeup you need a later bedtime, but pushing the bedtime later alone may backfire as this will extend the period between nap and bedtime & could make him more overtired, meaning the EW continue. So I think you also need to do a later nap.

I've recently done this with my LO who was waking at 5-5.30am, napping 11am-1pm & bedtime was 6/6.30pm. We pushed the nap later by 15mins every week, let him sleep 2hrs & pushed bedtime later by same. It took around 4-5 weeks & we had some relapses during that period because he got very overtired, but he is now waking at 7am, napping 12.30-2.30 and bedtime is 7.30. And after 12 months of early waking I can tell you it is bliss!

HTH.x

That does help Omama thank you.

He has his nap about 11am, in fact his routine is almost identical to the old one you describe for your DS. We have been keeping him up later at night but it hadn't occurred to me that there could be a link between being overtired and waking early.

I'll try and push his nap forward during the day and see what happens from there. Your new routine sounds great - 2 hour nap plus a 'lie in' - perfect!

Ooh, good advice there omama. A bit late for us, sadly, as DS has generally dropped his nap (unless he falls unsleep involuntarily, but that's another story!). Glad you're getting some better sleep now.