3 year old - 4am wake up

[xkellsbellsx]

My 3 year old is waking between 4-4.30am every day, he has been an awful sleeper since birth and only really needs 9-10 hours sleep in 24 hours, which is fine I just really need to the wake up to be a least 5am. We’ve tried, early bed time, later bed time, no nap, short nap, longer nap, early nap, late nap, you name it we’ve tried it, we even paid for a sleep professional when he was around 18 months, she gave us our money back because even she couldn’t get him to sleep 🤣 he isn’t hyper, just your constantly on the go little boy, no concerns with behaviours. He starts a school nursery in September so really need to get this sleeping sorted before then, because he is waking so early he is needing a nap to get through to at least a 6pm bedtime, which he won’t be able to do in the school nursery. He is fine with no nap, but like I say needs one while he has been waking at 4-4.30am, we considered the gro clock but don’t think he would fully understand, his room is a lovely temp, complete black out and has white noise playing.

Any Mumma’s out there who have any words of wisdom?

You might find that forcing no nap for a sustained period pushes the wake up later.

DD1 was an early bird (more like 5 though) and napped occasionally until reception. Almost overnight she started waking after 6. Warly, but manageable!

I know that’s an hour later than your son, but she’s always had a 7pm bedtime so the same timings just forwards a bit.

Have you forced the no nap for a few weeks? Any change has to be consistent for a few weeks to see if it makes a difference.

We tried the no nap for 2 weeks, maybe we should give it another go and preserver for longer, I just don’t know how he will get from 4am to 6.30/7pm with no nap x

We had this problem with our son at about this age and the only thing that worked was a reward chart!

He helped us make it (it was huge) with feathers and glitters and lots of paint etc and then we put it up on his bedroom wall. For every day that he stayed in his room until the gro-clock turned yellow (I think they can understand it at this age) he got to put a sticker on his chart. We also let him choose his own stickers prior to starting thw chart, and then let him choose which sticker he wanted to put on his chart each day.

We also took a photo of him each day next to his chart with his new sticker on and generally just made a really big deal out of it to make him all excited and actually want to earn them.

He got a little treat for every day he stayed in his room…. Only something like his favourite lolly for his snack, or something special for pudding etc.

But on Days 5, 10, 15 and 20 he got a bigger treat (we would take him to town and get him a toy worth £5 from B&M or something) and if he made it all the way to Day 30 (or whatever the end of the month was) he got a really special present and we pre-agreed what this main treat would be and consistently reinforced it so he knew what he was working towards.

When we made the chart we made the squares that represented the days 5, 10, 15 and 20 look different to the rest of the squares of the chart so he knew which ones meant he got a special treat if he reached them!

The last square on the chart to signal he’d get the big gift if he reached it looked extremely extravagant loads of stars and sparkles and ribbons etc 🤣

He absolutely loved the chart and the process and we made a huge deal out it every day he won a sticker!!

We just made sure he had things in his room to keep him occupied between the time he woke up and the time he was allowed to come into our room.

Even if we could hear him playing in his room it was just so nice being able to lie in bed and doze rather than have to get up.

As the months progressed he naturally ended up just sleeping in later anyway but it worked really well for us.