7 year old early mornings!

[Lizzie1970]

My 7 year old daughter has always gone through the night-I know I’m really lucky. However since the clocks went back she’s waking between 5.30 and 6am. She’s an only child and comes in and wakes me before going downstairs. Whilst the early mornings are killing me (!) the main problem is that she is just so tired. Whatever time she goes to bed she wakes at the same time so if she goes to bed a bit later she still wakes up at the same time and is never catching up. Any advice on getting her to sleep in a bit later just once in a while!

It’s hard to make someone go back to sleep but surely at 7 she is old enough to know that she can’t wake you up & needs to stay in her room quietly reading. Make it clear what time she can get up, bribe her if necessary.

Does she have a clock in her room? Maybe you could say she has to stay in her room until 7am. That way if she wakes up at 5.30, knowing she can't get up for another 90 minute, she may go back to sleep.

This worked with my 3 and 5 year olds (they can't tell time yet but we got a gro clock which glows yellow at a time set by you - 7am for us). They started getting up at 5am over summer during the lighter mornings.

My seven year old always wakes early and I HATE the clocks going back.
He has a clock in his room and knows that in the week, he stays in his room quietly until 7 (apart from going to the toilet of course!) and at the weekends, it's 7.30.