5 am waking how to stop it?

[candyfluff]

my ds nearly 2 yrs old is waking every morning at 5am and cannot get him to back to sleep he shouts screams and makes a god awful noise until we or rather me takes him downstairs for some breakfast.he shares a room with his brother who is 10yrs old and its making him very tired.any advice health visitor said wait until summer holidays to do something about it.

candyfluff, sympathies, my ds is doing this as well! Have you tried taking him into bed with you? I find this works with ds, he'll go back to sleep & we get another couple of hours.

Or could his bedroom be too light? Perhaps the light mornings are disturbing him?

Same happening to us and ds will not go back to sleep in his bed or our bed. He's wide awake at 5am and it's driving us mad. Very interested in any solutions - we are looking at blackout blinds - do these really work?

Blackout blinds do work but you need to fit them as close to the window as possible. We've got too much of a gap around ds's blind so we're going to put up a pair of curtains as well & see if this helps

you could use blackout material and sticky-backed velcro. There is a website which sells them, but probably cheaper and easy to do yourself.

This is just a phase and it does end!

I have to admit, I didn't mind it when DS1 did it. I'd get all my jobs done and be in the park for 8 am, with a job-free day to enjoy. But now, too many children who don't go to bed early enough for this to be a good thing

here you go - blackout blind kits

blimey foxy, I'm impressed! I'm far too groggy & bleary-eyed to even think about getting dressed before 8am, let alone getting everything done!

if I could get my little 'darlings' went to sleep before 10 pm, I'd be oh so happy to go to bed early and get up at 5 am - oooh anything for some peace and quiet

you know what I mean ...

Ds has always woken up early. I have never bothered fighting it.
But then I like a bit of sleep myself. I have been known to put ds to bed at 7.05pm and be in bed myself by 7.10pm

5am this morning [tired emoticon] - thanks foxy, I'll be ordering a kit today.

my DS did this for months at a time, round about the same age as your DS, then suddenly stopped for no apparent reason. so yes it's a horrible exhausting phase. and he also started sleeping later when we restricted his nap times to one hour then 45 mins but don't know if you're ready to do that.
blackout blinds can help, so can a light timer that comes on progressively later but he might be a bit too young to understand that he shouldn't get up till the light comes on (star chart etc can help). I remember always wishing that cbeebies started at 5am rather than 6am...

Black out blinds have helped here too but I now have black out material duck-taped to the window frame, a black out roller blind and a thick pair of curtains! It's absolutely pitch black in DS's room now.

we have black out curtains in his room since birth so its not the light waking him up,we do take him in our bed but he never sleeps and proceeds to poke us in the eyes calls for his brother and sister trashing the bedroom etc etc.
so we just take him downstairs and put the t.v on but by that point everyone is awake coz he makes so much noise.
any other suggsetions?

am in the same way myself with my 7 month old, and his 9month old little friend is doing exactly the same, both blacked out. We wondered if it might be the dawn chorus? We are on holiday together at the moment at they literally woke at the same split second. If it is that, you could try low white noise all night (eg a fan? )
This morning I fed mine at 5.30 and put him straight back to bed, got another hour in myself. I just thought if it's the same time every morning you could try the wake to sleep thing, the one where you lightly disturb them half an hour before you know they are going to wake, which in theory would tip them over into thenext sleep cycle. I've not done it though as it would seem a bit counterproductive ot have to get up at that godawful hour- those who have says it works after a few tries though.
Otherwise, it's earplugs and sitting it out til the mornings get darker. Foxythesnowfox, the only job I can get done upon being woken up at 5 is improving my swearing repertoire x

Same with my DD who is 19 months. got stair gate at door so she just cries, decided with DH to try and ignore her and this seems to have worked, so even though we're waking at 5.00 - 5.30 every morning, by 5.45 she's got bored and gone back to bed to sleep....persistence is the key.

Unfortunately you have a diff situation as you have older child in bedroom as well, so I suppose the only way is to get up, but at least your not puting your youngest in bed with you, then your stuck for a long time.

bed news from me

i believe some children just wake up early

and there's feck all you can do about it ime

ds1 was the same - only improved when he dropped all naps at 2.5yo

we're now going through it with ds2

Dd was similar at a slightly earlier age, and because she, too, shared a bedroom with an older sibling, we couldn't just leave her to fuss until she got the message. Instead I used to wake as soon as she did, and listen to her grumbling away, and woudl go to her before she started crying. But leavinging her a litle longer - even only 5/10mins - every few days. It took a month or more but eventually she was sleeping 7-7, and if she did wake was contented to play in her cot for a long while. And because she never howled for long, ds1 wasn't disturbed.

Ds2 is doing this now. Ugh. He, however, is a tough cookie, and we're not getting anywhere with him. Intereted re the 'wake to sleep' thing - never heard of that before. Any more imfo on it? I don't think I can do the same with him as with dd, because he doesn't grumble, he goes 0-60mph in an instant.

I wonder whether it makes a difference that he doesn't play much in his bedroom? We have a playroom downstairs, and tend only to use the bedrooms for sleep, whereas when dd was this age we lived in a flat and used the bedrooms during the day for play as well as for sleep. Do you do this?