If you had early waking toddlers...

[LaTristesse]

... did you do anything about it, if so what?!

Or if not did it eventually fix itself?

DS is 2 and has been waking at 5 or thereabouts for the past few months. I can't deal with it any longer and need to either find a solution or get my head round being patient and waiting for it to pass...

Any thoughts / experiences anyone?

My DD1 did this for about six months aged 1 - up til about 18 months. It's a killer isn't it. She seemed to grow out of it, but here were some of the suggestions we got:

• he may be very sensitive to light. My DD1 certainly is. If light seeps round the blackout blinds, have you tried the travel sort that suckers on? We have to use one of these on DD1 in summer even though she is 3 now. The one night it fell down she was up at 6, groggy and cranky. It might take quite a few nights to reset his body clock though.

• in conjunction with this, lots of late afternoon daylight is apparently good for the body clock.

• absolutely get rid of the early morning nap.

• is it possible he is hungry. DD1 was, looking back, probably waking up because she was hungry. Then, once she was awake, she wasn't tired enough to go back off. When does he eat his dinner, and have you tried giving him a substantial snack before bed.

Blackouts - proper sealing ones with Velcro to window frame

A later nap and a later bedtime...

He only slept ten hours a night ever Til he dropped his nap totally. Now it's ten or occasionally eleven hours.

With hindsight I should have cut the nap earlier.

For us an earlier bed did not work at all. It depends on whether your child needs sleep or not. Mine has never needed much and is not inclined to get overtired.

Why are some people saying an earlier bed time will help, how does that work?

Green - There is a theory that babies are naturally calibrated to sleep better between certain hours. No Cry Sleep Solution and Gina Ford (at opposite ends of the spectrum) I have both seen say that babies are biologically programmed for an early bedtime and sleep better when they get it.

Didn't work for us though

Ah ok thanks. Sounds risky, I've been trying a later bedtime with limited success!

I think it depends if they are overtired. We have found that an 8pm bed time works really well for us as a family. Others say their children would be climbing the walls with over tiredness by then.

Yes early rising meant to be caused by overtiredness so early bed solves that. Or it's caused by not needing that much sleep, and then early bed means even earlier rising!

Tertius, you've just explained in 2 sentences what I've been struggling to work out for 2 years. Thank you! Do you have any thoughts on the ideal nap in this situation?!

Hi OP,

I'll be watching this thread with intersted too as I have exactly the same issue. My ds, 2.5 yrs has been waking between 5.30 & 6 for the last 8 weeks or so and its killing me! Now pg with dc2 and needing more sleep!

He used to sleep til 6.30 - 7 but its changed for some reason. We've tried glo clock (he changes the setting, and then comes into tell me getting up time!), blacking out room, later bedtime (but not consistently), having later dinner in the evening. He still has a lunch nap, so I'm considering stopping that completely as I'm running out of ideas! He goes to bed by 7.15pm and is usually ready for it by that time, going off to sleep with no probs.

I hope we find a solution! I wish he'd go back to 6.30 wake ups which now seems a distant memory..

Day 2: went to bed at 7, woke at 2, resettled him, slept til 6 (much more acceptable!) Just had a 2 hr 30 min nap though! Too much? Should I have woken him?

Flattered! Thank you!

I will have a look now at your routine, hang on...

Well, I would definitely only allow one nap because the early morning one perpetuates early rising. By 2, one nap is totally the thing. If they need a nap at all. My son gave his up around 2.

And the time of that nap... Well, I guess you have to experiment. But if he always goes down fine at 7pm then I guess it doesn't matter too much. Whatever suits you. But probably later rather than earlier. So he isn't overtired by bedtime. (and likely to rise early etc etc).

But I do think ten Hours is an acceptable amount of night sleep for some.

It's interesting that he wakes half way through his nap. My son was totally reliable about having long naps as a toddler - but sometimes that was at the expense of his night sleep.....

Maybe put him in one of those massive grobags.

That solved a few problems for us.

And I'd be inclined to cap a nap at 1.5 hours. But I am totally basing this on my son and his lack of need for sleep.

When he was 18 months I would let him snooze for 3 hours and I had the 5 am starts.

They can cope with less naps etc better than I thought.

In Grobag for a nap?

Yes the waking mid-nap is foxing me. Today he did one sleep cycle in his bed, then woke asking for more sleep (?!), then laid on the sofa, in a quiet front room, and slept non stop for another 2 hours!

Thanks for taking the time; it's much appreciated and makes a lot of sense!

Sympathy OP. I had an early riser. I tried everything. The room was pitch black, he had a growbag, I tried keeping him up later, cutting out his nap, letting him sleep more in case he was overtired, giving him more milk before bedtime, giving him less to drink in case it was weeing waking him up, I had one of those waking up clock things, a special night light that went off when it was morning, soothing aromatherapy plug in vapours. In my desperation I tried everything.

I had already had to do sleep training with him to stop the night time waking of an hour & a half at 1am for a bit and even hardliners like Richard Ferber say that early waking is almost impossible to crack, if your child is wired that way.

For me & DS, none of it worked. He continued to wake between 4.30am and 5.30am every day. So, for about a year I put a TV in my bedroom and I would put him in bed beside me and put some kids DVD on & I would go back to sleep & he'd watch it. By the age of 4, he knew how to go downstairs & put on the TV & DVD himself!!!!! The rest of the house was gated off, so I wasn't worried about him getting up to no good & it meant that I could stay in bed until 6.30am.

He is nearly 13 now & is still an early riser. Very occasionally, he might have a lie in until 8am!

Day 3: back to his old habits! DH put him to bed as I had an appt, I assume he was in by 7. Woke at 4.30, resettled, woke at 5.30 & wasn't having any more resettling! So I think the superlong nap yesterday was a bad thing! Will limit today's nap to 1.5 hours, although he's going to knackered after getting up at 5.30. Early to bed I think!

Just keep the nap short for a few days and he will be forced to add to his night sleep. I do think some children steal from the night and give it to the day.

Good luck!

I am tryin to work out my 9 month olds naps - she is trying to transition to one nap already and it is causing mayhem!

Goodness, that is early! Good luck!

Day 4 here was better. After a 1.5hr nap at 1pm he went to bed at 6.45, woke at 5.00, resettled then got up at 6.00. Will aim for similar times today...

Just founf the thread and had to join in because we're in the same boat.

I think it's summer, because ds (then 20 months) went through this exactly this time last year. THen he stopped.

Ds is now 2.8 and generally wakes at 6, which is fine, as I'm up for work then anyway. At the weekend, cbeebies goes on in our room so we can doze. He's not a snuggler and prefers to bounce or crawl over us, "I'm a scchlug."

However he has been doing 5-530 for at least a week or so, and surpassed himself last night with a 4.18 one. Took 2 hours of us putting him back to bed before we gave in and let him in. He then demanded milk and cbeebies.

I've cut naps out (not that he was ever a happy napper - more a crash and burn) and we are keeping to his 7pm bedtime. Mind you, he often takes up to an hour to keep in bed then. I think one day this week he'd fallen aslepp at 830, woken at 5, then gone right through to 8pm the following night.

He ignores his gro clock.

I appear to have a toddler on mediaeval time.

Oh, and we have a 6 month old dd, so lots of furiously hissed, "get to bed"s, as I 'm terrified of waking her up. But she's a whole other story!