M has always been an early riser and since he started STTN, has gone through long phases (months and months) of getting up at 5:30am. He hasn't done that on a regular basis since going to one nap at daycare, and was getting up more like 6:30. In the last 3-4 weeks he has been getting up earlier and earlier and has been back to getting up at 5:30 for the last week. If he would just stay in his crib playing it wouldn't be a big deal, but he cries and cries until we go in there, and now he has developed the habit of dropping his lovey over the side of the crib and can't reach it and there is no chance of him not crying and going back to sleep with out it.
He goes to bed most nights at 7:30 and naps from 12-2 at school. He is definitely tired by 7:30 and generally goes to sleep without a fuss. Should we keep him up until 8 and see if that helps with a later wake time in the morning? Any other suggestions?
Re: bed time/wake time help
My fav sleep book - Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child - suggests putting them to bed earlier when they are waking up too early. It explains it better, but basically they need to sleep well in the early part of the night in order to sleep all night and late in the morning.
Try pushing his bedtime up to 7.
hmmm, I had forgotten about this, but mainly because when we tried this in the past, he just got up even earlier instead of sleeping later. 10-11 hours just seems to be his max, which is why I was thinking a later bedtime, but I may have to experiement.
I've also found that it doesn't matter what time DD goes to bed, she still wakes up at the time she will wake.
Just another thought - is he waking up on his own or from an external stimulus, like a neighbors car door or something? Could white noise help? We have struggled with early wake-ups too in the past (not for the past few months luckily) and it always seemed to be that she woke up from our neighbors doing something, they wake up for the day at around 4 a.m. and love to bang their trash can lids around.
We had to let her fuss it out when she woke up that early too - I'd change her diaper and get her some water or milk, but we made her go back to sleep. In my opinion, anything before 6 a.m. is not a suitable wake-up time for her, so we had to let her cry it out in the early morning. I know that's not for everyone though.