Waking too early

Shann50952

It seems every day we don't have to get up and go anywhere DD is waking up around 5:30...way too early for me. During the week I have to struggle to get her outof bed at 6:30 so we can get out of the house so you think she would sleep in on the weekend...but nope. Her bed time is about the same. She is usually in bed somewhere between 7 and 8. We have tried telling her if she gets up she can look at books in her room...but that hasn't worked, all she does is same "ma ma, ma ma" over and over again until I go in to get her. Any ideas on helping her stay asleep later.

howleyshell

A few thoughts.

1.  We recently bought a toddler clock that glows yellow when they're supposed to be sleeping or staying in their room and turns green when they can "come get mommy snuggles".  It kinda worked for us.

but... 5:30 is kinda early and a long time to expect her to just play by herself in her room so consider:

2.  Try waking her to go pee when you go to bed (so a few hours after she's last peed and gone to sleep).  I carry mine into the bathroom and pull down his pants for him.  He doesn't really even seem to wake up.

We started this in an attempt to curb wetting the bed accidents and the pleasant side effect was that he started sleeping an extra hour or 2 because his bladder wasn't waking him up.

or

3.  Cut out the day time nap or cut it back/make it earlier.  If she's waking up that early maybe she's getting enough sleep and is just done sleeping?

or

4.  Black out blinds.  At one point I seriously taped cardboard over my kids' windows and turned their rooms into dungeons.  The earlier sun light in the summer (and birds chirping at 4:50) had them waking earlier than they would normally if it was still dark out.

 

And that's all I've got.

 

flyingsaucer

DS used to be a 5:30 riser for the longest time and here is what worked for us

1.  Push bedtime later... slowly.  He used to go to bed at 7:30.  We kept him up until 7:40, 7:50 and finally 8pm... 8pm bedtime = later wake time for us

2.  Agree with pp about blackout shades.  Also, we use a white noise machine in DS' room.  In the morning he sleeps lightly and would wake at the sound on anything (cars outside, someone walking to the bathroom, etc).  The white noise helps him stay asleep

3. Ditto pp with the toddler clock... BRILLIANT invention!  I got mine on amazon and it has a little rabbit on it that tells DS when he should be sleeping and when he can wake up.  We have it set to 7am and it really works!  He plays or reads in his bed until the rabbit clock "wakes up"

he now sleeps till 7am most days!  Yay!