Mommies I need your help...I am SLEEPY!!! My son turned 2 in January and has always been a wonderful sleeper. He goes right to sleep in his toddler bed, and doesn't get up until morning. The problem? He gets up between 5 and 5:30. He used to sleep til around 6:30 during the week and around 7ish on the weekends. He falls right to sleep at night, so I know I'm not putting him to bed too early or late. We tried keeping him up later, and going down earlier. Neither has made any difference. Is there a way to change his little internal clock to sleeping a little later? He does nap during the day, around noon, which he still needs. We currently put him to bed at 7:30, but tried bumping it up to around 8 and even 8:30. Same result. Am I destined to be up before the sun????
If you go to the health food store, there is an all natural sleep aide for children. Give it to him for a few days to see if changes his sleeping patterns at all.
Also, are you wearing him out enough during the day?
Welcome to my life! My kids did this too. Actually, they seem to have phases of this off and on.
I have a couple thoughts/ideas. One is that if he can't get out of his room, just leave him in there. You may have a few mornings of tears, but if he doesn't need you to go in there (dirty diaper, fell of the bed, etc.), he'll be fine.
If he cries and comes out of the room or you need to go to him for any reason, first calm him down, then tell him it's not "wake-up time" yet, and let him know you'll come back when it's time.
It helps to have a baby gate at the door, or if he can't reach the door knob -- that way he won't follow you out the door!
My kiddos typically didn't go back to sleep once they were up this early (though they've finally begun doing so, at 3 and 5yrs, thank God!). So maybe provide a couple of board books or a quiet toy for him to play with while you wait for "wake up time."
Just to get him used to you being in control of wake-up time, you might go back on the first morning in just 5 or 10 minutes, then stretch it out over several days. Pretty soon he'll be used to entertaining himself, or just get bored and go back to sleep.
Of course, there's a good chance that after you say it's not wake up time and walk away, he'll scream like a banshee. This is when you re-confirm to him that he'll be ok, and you'll see him at wake up time, then go back to your room (or distract yourself by putting away last night's dishes...) and turn off the baby monitor :-). Come back to him after 10 or 15 minutes (or 5 min, whichever you prefer) and gladly pronounce that it's wake up time and start your day with him. Simply make this your routine and you should eventually have less screaming, and be able to stretch the time out to where the official "wake up time" is closer to 7am.
One other thought regarding early wake-up: Around age 2 is when a lot of kids are becoming aware of their bodily functions. It's possible that this early wake up is because he's tee-tee-ing in his diaper. It certainly doesn't mean you're ready to start potty training (with a boy, I wouldn't even approach it til 2 1/2 and have no expectation of success until near or just after his 3rd birthday). However, you might consider limiting his fluids intake after dinner, and be sure he's in a fresh diaper right at bed time. This early morning pee wake up happened with both of mine. In fact, once my daughter was out of diapers at night, if she ever had a potty accident in the bed, it wasn't until 5 or 6 am. We're still going though this intermittently with my 3 yr old. He's potty trained during the day, but still in a pull-up at night because of this. He's dry about half the time in the morning, so I expect this to be behind us in another few months.
Hope this helps!
I sounds like he's just a morning person. My younger son is that way and he has gradually started sleeping later. BUT, it wasn't until he was over 10 that he started sleeping in at all on the weekends. It is very difficult, but I know from experience that there isn't a way to make them sleep later. It will get easier as he gets older because he can start busying himself with quiet activities in the morning. Also, as he gets older, you can let him know you're not a morning person and need some quiet time in the morning. I tried getting up even earlier myself, so I could have my quiet time in the morning, but I just wasn't getting enough sleep myself. The good news is that you're not likely to have problems getting him up in the morning once he's in school.
Hi G.!
Oh my gosh do I feel your sleepless pain!! My daughter is 2 1/2 and I can't remember at what point last year she started, but she would wake up at 6am, sometimes 5:30am and once I remember she was up at 4:30am! It wasn't until around the week of daylight savings last month that she started sleeping later until 7:30am but in the past week I've noticed she's waking up again around 6:30am on the weekends.
We tried the same thing, too - letting her stay up a little longer in hopes she'll sleep later. That was a joke! And we put her to bed at the same time as you, too. When she wakes up early, we let her stay in her room in hopes that she'll either go back to bed on her own or at least play with all the toys in her bedroom to occupy her until we're ready to get up. But no luck. Sometimes we're able to buy an extra 30 minutes and that's it before she starts protesting. I try getting her to go back to bed even if that's with me climbing in to her bed too, but she doesn't buy it, she's ready to start her day!
Good luck, I wish I had some magic so that we could both sleep in more often! :-)
-Char
My kids did this as well when they were that age. We simply put up a baby gate over their door, high enough to where they could not go over and low enough they could not go under. We took all of the noisy toys out of the room and cleared off high shelves. It worked. They could get up and play with their toys until mommy and daddy were up.
J.
