If we start waking DS one hour earlier, will he go to bed one hour earlier too?

[PremiumHuman]

DS recently turned two years old. He is now falling asleep between 9-9:15pm, and waking 7-7:15am (with about three wake ups overnight).

A couple of days in the last week, he’s stayed awake until 9:30pm 😳

That’s with about one hour 15 min nap a day, from about 12:15-1:30pm. Occasionally, he won’t nap. On these days he falls asleep at about 8:45pm, so it doesn’t really change much.

I’m absolutely shattered and beginning to dread the evenings. I thought the clock change would come to my rescue, but it had no effect at all.

If I started getting us up at 6am, do you think he’d start to fall asleep an hour earlier too?

I cut the daytime nap around that and put them to bed at 7 iirc. On days when they were really cranky in the afternoon, I fed them a really early tea and had them in bed at 6 ish.

What is going on with the overnight wakes? Does he settle quickly?

How did the clocks change affect his sleep? That will give you a big clue as to how he's likely to respond.

Sadly it doesn’t usually work that way!. I would look at cutting the nap to 45 mins and once see what impact that has.
Also think about your evening routine, start winding down early to get an earlier bedtime.

I'd recommend reducing his nap first, wake him after 40/45 minutes. See if that helps

OP, what is it you kind the most? Is it the omega falls asleep, or the wake ups? When mine slept til 7.15 I’d happily take a late bedtime if it meant not being woken up early, but waking 3x in the night would really get me down

Yes he probably would eventually adjust, in the way everyone does eventually if they travel to another time zone, but I’d tackle the night wakes first. Any idea what is causing them because 3 is an awful lot for a 2YO? Drop the nap because if he’s sleeping less than 12 hours total (10 at night + a 1h45 nap, minus the night wakes, must be less than 12) and can manage a huge wake window in the afternoon of up to 8 hours then he doesn’t need it. Annoyingly it’s normal for him to take time to adjust (hence why it’s often called a transition) so I wouldn’t expect a much earlier bedtime on a no nap day had in isolation. You’d likely need 3+ days in a row to see a difference.

It literally didn’t! I was full of hope but it was as if nothing had happened with the clocks!

Well he stirs to feed from 5am but doesn’t really wake properly til 7 or so. So it’s not an uninterrupted block of sleep until 7.

We have tried winding down earlier. He is just WIDE awake and wants to read / play / stand upside down on his mattress / get his teddies / walk around etc!

Literally in the OP

I honestly don’t know what’s going on with the wakes. When he turned 21 months we had about six weeks of him sleeping ‘through’ which was incredible. He would also accept his dad putting him down. Then over summer it gradually changed again. Last night he woke at 1:30, 3:15, and 5am. He cries if I send his dad in. He just wants to feed. I don’t know what’s changed. Equally, when he was sleeping through for six weeks, it was nothing we did differently. It came out of nowhere and then went out of nowhere too.