The early mornings - when did it end for you?

[houseargh]

DD (19m) is a reasonable sleeper - gets herself to sleep quickly and generally sleeps 'through' but my god, the mornings. A run of 5.30s is a luxury, right now she's in a phase of waking up at 4 something. Today was 4.20. So I have to keep her entertained for well over 3 hrs until my DP's once weekly proper lie-in is over, and at that point I'll probably have to go back to bed myself for a while, just to get through the day. Tomorrow we'll do the same in reverse. It's grim, and definitely contributing to my desire to stop at one (though not the only reason).

I need some kind of light at the end of the tunnel, so if yours was a chronic early riser when did it stop being a problem for you, and how (ie. did they finally start waking up later / get old enough for the gro-clock to work / get old enough to sort themselves out in the mornings)?

Give a shattered mother some reassurance that at some point before all my hair has gone grey I might be able to go to bed at 10pm confident of getting the 8 hrs of sleep I so desperately need!

Jeezz 4:30 🤮
tbf my almost 4 year old wakes up at 5:30 on dot every morning weekends included and I’m mainly on my own so I’m thinking the same thing. When will it be even 6:30/7
when he is a teenager I will get revenge mwahaha

IME a gro clock only works for this age if you (a) have a child who is happy to be in bed alone for a bit when the wake up and (b) your expectation of how long they need to wait between waking up and getting up is reasonable. My 4.30am waker at 22mo was capable of understanding the gro clock, but not capable of waiting more than a few minutes to get up after waking. It took months and months (nearly 2years) of very very gradual movement of the gro clock to get to 6.30 getting up time, which might well have been the timescale without the gro clock anyway.

I didn’t entertain either, and not even any TV to tempt them. Made no difference.

We have a gro clock and it really helps; turns blue for nightime then yellow for daytime.

Your dd is probably a little young but by 3 (possibly earlier) I would be saying "still nighttime, back to sleep" and they would do it. They are naturally early risers which is very helpful most days but nobody allowed out of bed before 6.30am.

Check her room is completely dark.
Reduce naps.
Move bedtime 5 mins later per 7-10 days.
When you go downstairs, find a very low-key activity that doesn't 'reward' early waking.
Introduce some mentally challenging activities into the day.
Sadly, you may just be stuck with it for a while. Mine were like this until they started school, which tired them out beautifully. These days they're teens and rarely seen before midday if there's nothing on!
Good luck. It's so hard being tired. 💐

Groclock didn’t work here - their excuse? “I thought it was wrong”.

Mine stopped around aged 2 but she was up between 4-5am from 1-2 years. Tried everything for 6 months or so but just accepted it after nothing helped and I was exhausted of doing the techniques. I just brought her into bed and she watched hey duggee on the iPad whilst I dozed / lay down next to her. I'd lost the will. Then we'd get up out of bed at 6:30. She then just grew out of it on her own. It's so rubbish. I spoke to loads of friends and colleagues about it and many of them went through it too. She started doing it again aged 3 but the gro clock sorted that

My 2 dc’s still get up early no matter what time they go to bed,they are 8 and 6!

Sorry OP you don't want to hear this but I'm mid 50s and still wake early.

Gro clock never worked for DD- she used to shout that it was broken because it showed the moon when the sun was up outside🙄I think for us she moved post 6am at arou

Mine did it but only for a couple of short phases. By 3 she got up at 7 went the gro clock said she could.

A couple of things that helped us - reducing and then getting rid of the daytime nap, getting her to bed earlier and nursery wearing her out in the day

Apologies if you've tried this, or if it wouldn't work at their age, but I would treat anything before 6am exactly the same as a 2am wake up and wouldn't be getting them up for the day. Possibly a few days similar to sleep training but might help them?

DS2 never napped to the same extent as DS1 but I happily gave up more downtime in the day for 7pm - 8/9am. Could you reduce the naps and see if that helps them get the same overall sleep bit more of it at night?

Aargh posted too soon. She moved post 6am at around 3.5, sadly at the point when DS hit his early waking phase. Age 7 she still gets up around 6:30, but at least now quietly reads or watches TV and makes her own breakfast. I spent months and months trying to change it- nothing worked and I think you just need to somehow change mindset sadly just to accept and adjust. Alternate lie ins, earlier bed, doing something fun/useful with the early start (morning walk with croissants, trip to park, 6am supermarket visits)

Just a very gradual improvement here, but absolutely a huge one over time. 4.5yo DS is probably 7am on average now, he was around the same as yours OP as a young toddler. He will occasionally have a mega lie in until nearly 8 if we're really lucky. 2.5yo DD has mostly outgrown the wake ups that start with a 5 and is probably 6am on average now. With the occasional 5:30 if she naps too many days in a row. There absolutely is light at the end of the tunnel (although a word of warning that once you're reliably getting to 6/6:30 most days, the odd 5:30 will leave you feeling so hard done by!)

It's brutal but it does improve. Winter helps a bit, the darker mornings definitely contribute. Black out blinds help a little but not a lot.

Drop the naps if you can, or just let them have a 10 minute power nap rather than a long sleep.

And don't be afraid to chuck a tablet/tv in their room for early mornings if they will watch it. As long as they are safe an hour or two screen time while the rest of the family dozes for a bit longer isn't the end of the world. When ds was 2, nearly 3 I put a tv in his bedroom, showed him how to use the next button on his remote and downloaded a fuckton of Andys Dinosaur Adventures and Ben and Holly. He would come and wake me up, would pop his tv on and have another hour in bed.

At 8 he still wakes early in the summer, he just bobs his tv on until I get up at 7am. Not ideal but we do whatever we need to do to get through.

If mine had an early nap he'd be up early! We moved first nap back to 11.30 (he'd been getting up so early that he was napping by 10) and that fixed it for us.

They're all so different!

Mine was always an early riser, up to the teenage years, although about 4/5 years it went to about 6am, then 10 ish about 7am.

I don’t have a problem in general with tv/tablet to get through to a reasonable getting up time, but for my eldest when we did it it resulted in progressively even earlier wakeups as they were waking up asking for tv, so it became a habit-forming thing in itself which was annoying. So we stopped doing that pretty quickly

When does he nap and how long for?

*she!

The early riser gradually got to 6 over time. He’s 12 now and slept in for the first time ever last week.

One reason I had two close together is that I’d get weekend lie-ins back quicker than if I had a bigger gap (though DC2 is more of a night owl). I think they were about 4 and 5 when they didn’t need morning supervision anymore.

My 9 year old still wakes early. About 6. He’s always been this way. It’s alright though because he gets his own breakfast now and feeds the dog and generally leaves me alone to snooze.

You need to drop the nap, or at least shorten it. We had this BD it didn't last, I think by the time they were at preschool they stopped getting up so early, now they're 10 and 8 and it's a struggle getting them it of bed!!

We have an early riser. He’s now 23 months. It has evened out at some time between 0600 and 0630 these days, but today was 0500.

it was 0430/5 for a while as well - but it did improve. We kept day naps (2hrs a day at lunchtime) and bedtimes (7pm) strict.

it will improve…hang in there…but you are also poss just destined to have an early riser!

we did the mornings day about as well until no2 came along.

I remember this and things that helped were a gro clock (no getting out of bed til the sun - but my boy was extremely willing to follow our instructions ..) a blackout blind stuck to the window and a roller on top, door closed unless it was too warm for that. Then he gradually crept 'later' towards 6am. Once he went to school he slept a bit longer again. He is now 14 and still wakes up at 6:30! But it does have benefits as I generally don't have trouble getting him up for school. We keep bedtime early so he gets enough sleep, 9:30ish. Once he was about six we got him a tablet and let him use it after a certain time in the morning and that was a real game changer for coping with it, especially at weekends. Really feel for you, it's horrific. I only have the one child!