HELP 5am wake ups 😭😭😭😭

[AmieB]

Hi guys, I'm at my wits end with our 15mo. He is waking between 5-5:30am EVERY morning 😭 his current schedule is as follows :

Wake 5-5:30am
Nap 1 9-10am
Nap 2 1-2pm
Bedtime starts 6:15pm
In bed around 6:45pm

Ideally I know he should be heading to just 1 Nap a day at this age but with 5am wake ups he is impossible by 9am. 3x days a week he is also with his childminder who has to do school drop offs so he falls asleep.

Help PLEASE any tweaks tips advice xxx

Change the nap but also put socks on if feet aren’t covered, happened by mistake one night and it worked he will be wearing socks for the foreseeable

I'm going to save you a bit of time and agonising. No wizardry with naps / blackout curtains/ expensive gadgets will help u. Go to bed early and get used to it .
When ds was about 3 we found some success with a gro clock and reward chart , he didn't sleep any longer but could be bribed to play quietly in his room until 6.30 am .
When he started school things improved and now he's 8 he will still get up latest at 7.30 am but can get up quietly and independently now !
You won't believe this but sometimes I miss those mornings with toddler ds up before the larks , I used to get all my chores done befor the day started.
Even now I'm in the habit of getting up early still, it can be very productive!

@Bert2020 we've started doing this too and we seem to get a little longer 🤣🤣

@Bert2020 he's in footless Pyjamas but in a sleeping bag? Could they still get cold? Hadn't thought of this haha xx

@donutosaurus glad it’s not just us.

@AmieB absolutely, ours is in a bag too. It may just be chance but I’m not questioning it

In my experience there's not much you can do, some babies are early risers. But there's a silver lining, out of my five teenagers the ones who used to wake up really early are the ones who get themselves up and ready for school with no bother! All those early mornings will pay you back one day.

This was my dd2 completely at that age. I was losing the plot I was so tired. The thing that worked was a sleep clock-sheep that was either awake or asleep. I didn't believe that she would understand it at that age but she did and it made an enormous difference very quickly. So we set it for 6am to start with and moved from there. It would be worth giving it a go.
Please know its only a stage - she is now 12 and can lie in all morning!!

When ours were tiny, before preschool, they had much later bedtimes so we were more synchronised! It sounds like yours had just had enough sleep by then.

You know this, but the issue is the early nap. He’s outgrown it and would be fine on one nap a day. Dropping the morning nap solved 5am wakes for us in less than a week. Was a difficult week, pushing through until after lunch with a toddler who’d been up since 5:30, but his night sleep caught up quickly and we’ve never looked back since. Now sleeps in until 7, we regularly have to wake him. I won’t hesitate to start cutting down his nap as soon as morning wakes start creeping earlier in future.

Week of leave? Bed in one nap and ask the childminder to really respect that - is he falling asleep in their car or the buggy?

Ah sorry just realised you’ve ear marked half term to drop to one nap. I think it’ll give you good results. Good luck!

My sons on one nap a day and has been for 2 years and is 3 and still wakes up at 5am

Sadly I don’t think anything we do can change this, just go to bed earlier yourself