Does reducing the morning nap really help with early-morning waking?

[Zinger]

Anyone got any experience of this? I'm about to try it!

I have experience of this - but no it didnt help us! It might work for you though - so give it a try. Other things that helped though were:

1. a black out blind helped
2. wearing him out during the day
3. making sure that when he goes to bed he is calm and relaxed when he is going to bed! sounds strange I know. But if ds is excitable before he goes to bed he always has a restless nights sleep and wakes early.

How old is your little one?

Just over 6 months. Thanks for the tips!

ds is 2 and I know it sounds funny - it is so hard to think back to what a 6 month old is like!! You get out of practice so quickly!
Zinger - do you feed before bedtime?
how early is early?

V interested to hear what people say on this. DD is 8mo and has a 2 hour morning nap (9-11ish) - I've been wondering if this contributes to her waking at 5-6am (though we never get her up til 7)

Yes we feed him at 6.30 and again about 10.30. Definitely not hunger - he's quite happy when he wakes - we don't usually have to go to him but we can't go back to sleep while he's thumping about in his cot! He wakes about 5.30am.

seabird and zinger - why dont you try it by moving the morning naps by 15 minute intervals and see what happens? I have found now that ds is 2 - all the things that I tried but in the end he sort of corrected it himself! But it is worth a go. I think that it is all trial and error.

Zinger- I know what you mean! We put a few toys in with ds and find it hard to sleep through the clattering about. You wait until they can talk loudly! It is impossible to sleep through ds having a morning chat with thomas the tank engine!

not in our case!

What is his current nap schedule? I found with dd that it wasn't so much about cutting the length of the nap as making it later in the morning that helped. Whenever she wakes really early she's tired really early but if I give her an early nap she wakes early again. Why don't you move his nap a bit later and later every morning and see how it goes? At that age, dd (now 21.5 months) woke at 7ish, napped for an hour and a half at 10.30 and another hour and a half around 2.30pm. She went to bed about 7.30pm.

He currently naps about an hour and a half at 9 and another hour and a half at 12.30. Has about half an hour between 4 and 5 in the afternoon too.

Not sure what I'm going to try actually - keep changing my mind. Having decided to shorten his morning nap yesterday, he did it himself, weirdly (45 mins) - and this morning he only had 30 mins! Bizarre. In fact he only had a total of an hour and a half yesterday, but his night sleep was the same as always. We'll see what happens today. He's only recently started to nap well so I'm very reluctant to wake him - ever!

Hmm.

Thanks joanneg that's what I had decided to start trying actually. Fingers crossed...

my Ds has never been an early bird, but started to not want to go to bed sat night, and i brought his morning nap from 9am to 11am and he has 2 hours and he doesnt have his 2pm till 3pm nap, so conbined 2 one hour naps into 1 two hour nap, he now sleeps 13-14 hours at night

my Ds is 14 months

What time does he go to bed at night, Zinger? If I were you I'd try to move the morning nap later rather than cut it short, then move the lunchtime nap later too and cut the late afternoon half hour. It seems he's doing quite a lot of daytime sleeping in total for his age and it would be nice if he could tack a bit of it onto his night!