Early waking/Gro clock sabotage - what to do??

[Popskipiekin]

Help. DC1 has always been a biddable people pleaser who willingly stays in bed until gro clock says it’s time (7am).

Naturally, DC2 (3.5) has turned out to be a stubborn maverick who yanks the gro clock out of the wall 5 mins after we say goodnight. No amount of entreaties, bribery, star charts, removal of screen time etc seems to work. He then is awake and talking loudly from 5.30am, sometimes earlier. I feel ridiculous saying this but I really want to appeal to whatever common sense he has (I know.... do toddlers/pre schoolers even have common sense...) and help him understand that keeping the clock on will help him know when it’s time to wake up, but he doesn’t buy into it in the same way as DC1.

Did anyone else have a gro clock eschewing DC and either help them to embrace it eventually or find another way to help them stay in bed until the “right” time? (I really am not keen on falling in line with a 5.30am start to our day, particularly as DC1 is happy in his room until then.) Many thanks!

A good 3 or 4 weeks of consistantly later bedtime is the best day to deal with this. It does mean you have to deal with tired crankiness in the phase when bedtime is later and morning also early, but with consistency it takes about 3 weeks to shift the body clock.

Plug it in when you go to bed?
Do something to make it inaccessible- extension to high shelf?
5.30 is not morning. I can tolerate 6, but not 5.30.

Get some proper blackouts. I just got some from Easyblinds (or something like that - I can check) as my 3 year old had started Gro Clock beating with the early light. They were really easy to put up - it took me about 5 minutes and it’s just Velcro sticky things. They’ve completely blacked the room out and he’s waking up later.

Also, why can’t you go back in at your own bedtime and plug his clock back in? Or put it up high on the wardrobe?

Also, can you bribe him? When I was exhausted before I got the blinds I managed to bribe mine with a new toy! He kept super quiet until he saw “Mr sun”

Thank you all for your responses. Agreed, Cantchooseaname 5.30 is intolerably early!

To those asking if we can just plug it in ourselves or put it high up - we’ve tried switching on again, he just switches it off in the early hours (he really has a thing against it and also does seem to be a light sleeper and/or very aware of noise). Trying to think where exactly would be out of reach - nothing really high enough with just chest of drawers in his room, and the plugs are all at ground level (and I don’t want to make him angry and start dragging back the furniture in the middle of the night to locate the plug - and he would try to do this...)

Sadly this child is unbribable. Which, in a way, I commend him for. He really does not care.

We will definitely try to make his room darker - we actually used to have those Velcro blinds in an old house, they were amazing. Time to do that again and yes, thanks Fate, I think you’re right about delaying bed time - we tend to put him down before his older brother but this one always seems to need less sleep. Just the way with some kids I guess. We will give it a go. Thanks for your help.