How do I stop my toddler waking up at 5am?

[hm4912]

Please help!! My 18m has been waking up at 5/5:30am for the past 2 months and I am one shattered mum..

she goes to bed around 7pm, has 1 nap in the day between 1-2 hrs (usually 12pm-2pm). Room temperature is fine and she is dressed appropriately (20 degs, sleepsuit/vest and bag), room is pitch black, has a bottle before bed.

please did this happen to anyone else and did you manage to solve it?!

5:30 wake ups happen in both my children. My oldest, it stopped when she dropped her nap. My youngest I love his nap time more than sleep in the morning so no plans to change, so here I am awake at 5:30 but, unusually, he's still sleeping to.

Also, allthough 7 is a popular bedtime you could try pushing it back. My just turned 2 year old is between 7:30-8.

You wait until March when the clocks spring forward and voila your toddler wakes at 6:30!!!

Mine were early wakers. 7-5 is a great nights sleep really. I would just suggest you go to bed earlier.

It will adapt as they get older.

At 18 months there isn’t much you can do.

A clock with eyes and a coloured face really helped us when my eldest was about 2.5yo. But they need to be old enough to understand for that to work.

My advice would be to take the early mornings in turns with your partner.

Unfortunately if they're an early waker then there's nothing you can do. Mine was a 5am wake up for ages, he's now a 5:30 waker. That extra half hour took a year to get to😅

No idea. My nearly 3 yo has been waking at 5 since she turned one. My 6yo still wakes at 5 too, but she’s at least old enough to play / read in her bedroom until 6 when she comes to wake me up

Wish I knew. Ds1 was and still is an early riser and he’s 18 now. Later bedtime didn’t help honestly you could have put him to bed at 4:30 and he’d still have got up again at 5:30.

My 5 year old is a 5am waker for which I'm grateful as the last year was 430am wake ups which is brutal.

My 10 year old was the same but she now sleeps in until 7am.

Hoping he too will eventually sleep in longer....

Good luck, it's exhausting!

Not sure there’s much you can do, some are just early wakers. 7-5 is pretty good for sleep.

As others have said there are only limited things you can do and 7-5 is pretty good.

1. Limit that nap to 1 sleep cycle ( 45 minutes) that will probably mean not putting them to bed but napping in the buggy/ car seat.

2. Push bed time to 7:30/8pm so that those 10.5 hours finish after 6am.

This what what we did with clever, active DS (now aged 20). He just doesn't need a lot of sleep by age 6 his bedtime was 8:15, he woke between 6 and 6:30 throughout his primary school career. I can count on the fingers of one hand the time he slept more than 11 hours in a stretch.

Move your own bedtime earlier. They get up when they get up, and they are most definitely awake. it’s easiest to just work with it.

Not to depress you, my early riser never really changed- she’s now 17 and is still awake between 5 & 6 every day (unless been to a party then may sleep in until 8). I embraced going to bed earlier myself and having early starts at weekends when not working meant being first to arrive at museums / shops / early starts to days out etc and avoiding crowds - silver linings and all that!

Move the bedtime to 7.30 and treat any wake up before 6am as a middle of the night wake up. Keep the room dark and quiet until 6. Then, when it's 'morning' let them know by turning lights on, saying good morning, chatter with them. So they learn the signs for morning.

Oh, my early riser woke slept in this tbecause he's sick. 😞

I'm not sure you can. You can train them to not wake you though...

My eldest is 14, and has been an early waker his entire life, so he was trained to go and get his own snack (left out on the side for him the night before) and watch ipad until I got up at a slightly more civilised time.

It didn't matter what time he went to bed.

On the bright side, I don't have to dig him out for school, so there are benefits later on, and his little brother has had a certain amount of influence from him, so he's not such an early riser, but he's also not an over-sleeper, and he's also always been happy getting up and getting snack/ipad with no fuss.

You change your bedtime to earlier so that you get enough sleep before they wake up. There's not a lot else you can do in my experience.

would taking her into your bed for a wee cuddle buy you some extra sleep time @hm4912 ?

You can't do anything!

Some children are just early risers. All of mine have been. My teens still get up at 6am every morning !

Sorry to say OP, but some Babies are just that way! My 3 DCs still wake up between 5:30-6 and they're 4, 8 & 10! Early bedtimes and dropping naps never worked for us, luckily I'm an early risers too! You do get used to it eventually

Mine did that around that age. We put up with it for a bit and tried a later bedtime with not much success. Eventually we worked out that DH can put her back to bed. (She doesn't go back down for me so he has to do it.) She's 2 1/2 and she will wake a bit early (more like 6am) but mostly knows to stay in bed unless she hears us up.

Later dinner, later bedtime, and a lot of finger crossing.

Or just accept it, and get up early yourself - but then I have 2 teenagers who rarely sleep past 7, even in the holidays....

Well Dts are now 13 and still up by 630 most of the time. We had a horrendous spate of 4ams when they were small and the clocks changed. Anything that started with a 5 was a good day.

You have my sympathies it's awful but some of them are just built that way.

@SnowyIcySnow snap!

have you tried an earlier bedtime? Like 30mins earlier. Sometimes when they are overtired cortisol builds up in their bodies and that is the hormone that wakes us in the morning. When there’s less sleep pressure in the morning they are more likely to find it harder to go back to sleep even if they need it. You have to be consistent. Try it for 2 weeks before you decide if it works or not. You can also make sure you’re not swooping in too quick and getting up and feeding them too early as that is just reinforcing the feeling that it’s time to get up even though it’s 5am. Treat it like a night waking until 6am.