What time do your toddlers start their day?!

[freebster]

Our 16 month old DD has never slept past 6am and most mornings is awake from 5am onwards. Going in to her to try and settle her is always fatal as she then screams to get up. She sleeps like a dream until then, settles well at bedtime by herself at around 7pm. We have tried a later bedtime and have tried cutting down her daytime nap (usually 90 mins at lunchtime) but both these made no difference atall.
Do we just resign ourselves to early starts or is there anything else we can try?
Our older DD (3.5 years) would sleep until 7.30 or 8am if she was able to!

I'm with Starlight. Later bedtimes are the only solution. Lots of children just don't need more than 10 hours of sleep in a row.

IMO the pattern is set at a very young age when all these little ones are packed off to bed at 7pm, having their main block of sleep while parents are still up, then wreaking havoc in the small hours.

My nearly two year old goes up at 7 and very rarely wakes before 7.30am. And she still has a two hour nap after lunch.

I have no explanations as to why she is so committed to her cot, but everyday I am thankful for it!

My advice would be to put her bedtime back by 30mins and then to bring her into bed with you when she wakes up. Our dd was doing just the same as yours and this seemed to be the solution. She didn't go back to sleep straight away but allowed us to have a good extra hour in bed. Slowly it resulted in her going back to sleep with us. She now wakes up between 7.30 and 8.30! Mind you, she doesn't like to sleep in the day. That could have something to do with it!