Early rising driving us mad

[TerrifiedMothertobe]

We have been struggling with our 2 year olds early rising since march ish time, we also have a small baby so sleep deprivation is pretty bad.

This morning he was up at 522 and he's so noisy he is now beginning to wake the baby which is making matters worse.

We think we have tried everything, please please someone give us some new ideas. He is shattered so definitely not getting enough sleep.

He starts a new nursery in a few weeks and won't be able to nap during the day, I am worried this will mean he'll be up even earlier.

I have a slightly younger child but we have intermittent problems with early rising. Every time it starts happening I cut her nap a bit and put her to bed earlier and it seems to get her back to post 6am waking.

We've had it very recently, so I have limited her nap to 1 hour 10 minutes and awake by 2, and she goes into her bed at 6.45. She tends to fall asleep pretty quickly. around 7 and wake up about 6.15. Until I did this she was taking a really long time to fall asleep and then getting up around 5.40. It's horrible having an early riser but pre 6am is not reasonable!

Why do you think he'll be up earlier if he doesn't nap? This could be the answer.

What time does he go to bed? At that age DC1 slept about 10 hours, maybe 10.5 at night so he went to bed at 9pm.

We have tried putting him to bed late consistently, and he still gets up at 530 ish, but just has less sleep and is very very grumpy.

He is nirmally asking for a sleep around 830 am, so v tired.

We did try to drop his nap but it seemed to make him so overtired he woke up in the night so chickened out after 2 days, He definitely needs at least 11 hours, hes pooped at 530 but just cant get himself back to sleep.

I have one that wakes early when either overtired or undertired.....so it always requires judging and the tweaking!!

What time is your Ds napping and for how long, then what time is bedtime?

he sounds overtired to me, but the trouble is by 5am, they have had too much sleep to enable them to go back off.......

We had issues with DS for about a month just before he turned 2. He'd wake up at 5 am (on the dot!) regardless of when he went to bed.

I think the light contributed, so we got a black out blind. And we've moved his nap time a little earlier, so he now goes down around 11am and is not allowed to sleep past 1pm (usually wakes after about 1.5 hours). He's definitely not ready to drop his nap yet.

Not really sure what exactly worked in the end, but I think those are the main two points. And sticking consistently to his normal, early bed time (so asleep by 7pm). Otherwise he just got over tired and got worse and worse. Took a little time, but I think it might've just taken him some time to get over the accumulated lack of sleep?

Have you tried a gro clock? It's taken a few weeks for ours to work but it has, finally.

Another advocate here of the gro-clock. Both of my sons (4.8 and 2.11) have one and they have worked great. However, now they end up waking up and talking through the walls to each other, so whilst they're not getting out of bed they ARE still causing us to wake up with their funny conversations to each other.

Unfortunatley, I don't think there is a cast-iron cure. Both of mine are regularly awake at 6am (sometimes earlier) and get cranky later on in the day due to getting up to early. But it doesn't matter if they go to bed later, they'll still wake at this time. If they have a nap (which they both outgrew a long time ago) they will struggle to fall asleep before 9pm and will still wake at 6am.

I'm just going to get my revenge when they're teenagers and wanting to stay in bed til midday ;)

I had 5.30 starts for about two years, I know how exhausting this can be. In the end our GP gave us phenagan (I think it was this). I know it is not ideal to resort to sleeping medicine but we did this for two or three nights and it reset DD's body clock which seemed to be programmed to early waking. Amazingly this worked for us, even if it doesn't work for you OP it would give you a break and two or three nights sleep.

My friend has a blog post on this - sleepfairyparentrescue.co.uk/blog/2014/02/23/fixing-early-rising-in-1-3-year-olds/
I haven't tried it personally - but lots of people said it worked well. good luck

Hi all. Thanks for suggestions. Caroline- dee came out and tried to help us, her system failed us I'm afraid and all subsequent advice :(.

Maybe we will try the drug route... Everything else has failed, gro clocks, lights in timers etc. but when he is awake, he's awake. Last year it got better around September time, I am hoping to god it's the same now....

I just hate him being so shattered. Begging for bed at 8am is awful. I would agree that he's in a habit and the secret is to keep him asleep, not try and get him back to sleep at 5 as that fails.

He goes to bed before 7 and usually asleep after story's around 715' so I can't bit him to bed much earlier.

Cumulative tiredness never seems to work, we never have random 630 lies ins at all. The latest is around 545.

So shattered after 4 or more months of this and our new baby, now 7 months. I need a nights sleep!

Oh and he will be 3 in September and he can't sleep at his new nursery- I think I should prepare him for this soon..!

feel for you. Is his room near yours? I mean, do you hear him stir before he wakes up properly? I can sometimes nip in as soon as I hear DD stir if she makes noises around 5/5.30. I then tell her that it's night night time and she must go back to sleep. She always waves goodbye and then will stay in bed (dozing rather than heavy sleep usually) for another hour. If she's properly awake though then this is a non starter. worth a try?

Phenegan(sp?) is something which is given out for a variety of reasons including sleep issues. We're going to try it soon for travel sickness, for example. In your situation I think I would be tempted to try it for a few nights, as a previous poster has suggested, to see if it does help. Perhaps it could work alongside a light on a timer etc - if it helps him sleep longer and then he wakes when the clock is yellow you can make a huge fuss of it?

We tried sleeping in with him to see whether we could nip it in the bud,he just thinks it's a game, I have once succeeded in getting him back to sleep, but that was after he woke at 430....

We have got him some stuff to play with in his room, but he is seriously noisy..., and he protests so loudly about going back to sleep- he often wakes the baby. It's crap.

My sister in law is a go so,going to ask her about this drug.

I'm so tired, just fed baby, so,better try and get some shut eye before he wakes for feed and then my 5am wake up call....

I can share what we do OP, you never know!

Gro-anywhere black out blind with black out curtains over the top
Nap between 1.30-3.30
Bedtime at 8pm. He usually sleeps between 7.15-8am, depending on how noisy the rest of the house is. Without the blind/curtain combo he's up with the sun.

I think that the idea is to push the nap back so you're not rewarding the early waking but then wake up early enough from the nap so that bedtime isn't a battle. If you're waking up from the nap after 4.30pm then drop the nap (yuck!)