oh god cant deal with this early waking any more

[woodstock3]

5am this morning again. this week it's been between 4.15 (the morning after the clocks went back admittedly) and 5.30am but never later.
im going to bed at 9pm half the time, but i work ft and long hours and i just cant function like this: im constantly short-tempered, struggling to concentrate at work, and starting to feel desperate. dont think i can do this for much longer.
he never wakes up during the night but is wide awake at 5.30 and that's that. he goes to bed at 8pm and naps at lunchtime for 1-2 hours.
i've tried cutting down his daytime sleep to an hour; putting him to bed later; leaving him to cry and hoping he goes back to sleep (he doesn't); lots of activity to tire him out during the day; and everything else i can think of, but nothing works. he's knackered by the end of the day but come 5am, there we are again. we've tried blackout blinds but he's waking before it's even light.
he's never needed a lot of sleep and always used to wake at 6.30ish but these mornings are killing me. any ideas, or are we stuck with this?

how old is he ?

Try a longer sleep in the day ? Overtired kids often don't sleep well at night.

Id he old enough to be told - no getting up - you stay in bed till x time ?

You won't believe this but try putting him to bed earlier. Try 6.30 for a few nights, he may be sleep deprived and by doing this he can get really rested, and better at settling himself. I did i with my DD and it worked

Try Marc Weissbluth (I think)Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child, its great and really helped me.

he's 18mo so not really old enough to understand, tho we do try saying 'it's not mornig yet' and leaving him to settle himself.
thankyou will go have a look for the marc weissbluth book....

it WILL pass

have ahd the same with both dsses

in the meantime, try searching threads on 'wake to sleep'

We had this recently with dd2 (18mo now). It didn't last long because I read one of the wake to sleep threads on here and it really worked. She was definitely sleep deprived as a result of being up early but it was the wake to sleep that knocked her back into being able to sleep as much as she needed. She was much happier after we did it too.

aha wake to sleep that's the thing where you half-wake them an hour earlier than they would normally wake and then they're supposed to sleep thru? have read about it but put off trying it by the fear of having to get up even earlier and being even more knackered and it still not working....

The idea is that they are in their deepest sleep an hour before their normal waking time. IT actually took a lot of effort to wake ours at that time.

woodstock at 18 months my son was waking really early like yours and I tried all sorts of tricks too. He just grew out of it but it did go on for a while (a few months). HE is back to to 6.30am - 7am but I don't think it was anything I did, just a change in his little psyche.
Has he always woken up this early?