3-Year Old Is Waking at 445! - Long Beach,CA

I bought a special kid clock/nightlight from One Step Ahead. It allows you to program it to change from yellow to green when it is okay for the child to wake. My 2-yr old was easily able to understand it and was so excited about it. Friends that spend the night even follow the rule that they can't get up til it's green! It's awesome. If you think he's still tired at 445 and needs to go back to sleep, this is what I would recommend. Good luck!

I told my kids that waking up didn't mean the rest of the world was awake. It was quiet and sleep time. If they didn't want to go back to sleep or felt they couldn't, that was fine, but they were not to get up and they were not to wake the "house" up.
I told them they had to stay in their beds until the "house" was awake. That meant the lights were off, TV's were off, Mommy and Daddy were still asleep. The neighbors will still asleep.
Waking up wasn't the same as GETTING up when it was too early to start the day.
I would really try letting him have "rest" time during the day. Get him in the practice of laying down quietly in his bed for a certain period of time. Tell him he does NOT have to go to sleep, but he has to be quiet and let his bones rest. My kids weren't great nappers, but they had "quiet time" every day and they were expected to stay in their beds. Sometimes they konked out and actually napped.
I think if you do that during the day, you might find he'll get a little rest or at least some down time and then it helps with practice of being in his bed and quiet even if it's 4:45 in the morning.
Like I said, being awake is NOT the same as being up and going when the rest of the house is still asleep and quiet.

It worked for my kids. Give it a try.

Best wishes.

Both my kids went through this phase. I think they just had early internal clocks. You could try a later bedtime, but don't push it if he's tired. Let him sleep. My mom told me that she would tell me to go back to bed as a little one and I did! My kids are UP!!! I would try to tell them to go back to bed or to play quietly in their rooms, but no guarantees from my experience... we just adjusted our bed times. Now they are 3.5 and 5.5. and get up anywhere from 4:45 to 6:30... getting later as they get older.

My son gets 10 hours at night and a 2 hour nap during the day. In my house - 7 pm is way too early for bed - but I understand it works for some. Our 2.5 year old son goes to bed at 8:30 and gets up at 6:30. Takes a nap from 12-2 every day, sometimes longer on the weekends.

I got up with my daughter a couple of times, but that really was not working. After the second time I told her she had to stay in bed until the sun was all the way up. It worked surprisingly well. She's almost four now, so it's been almost a year since that happened. Now she's waking up at all hours with "I need lotion and water and music and snuggling" (no joke). Turns out she needs to pee.

When our kids did this we just told them that it's not time to get up and they must stay in bed until 6, 7 or 8 or whatever time etc. They all were eventually trained to stay in bed and even stay asleep until it's time to get up. They all even started sleeping in on Saturdays...LOL =) Love that!!

7pm might be a touch early. try bumping that to 730 but I bet more than anything else he is waking up hungry. Do you stuff him with a healthy snack before bed? we used to have to give my boys a good snack before bed. usually a bowl of oatmeal or cheerios. nothing with big liquid that would make them need to pee just a good filling snack. a pbj or oatmeal will probably do the trick. try that

My 4 year old has been doing this some too - not as early as that, but still way more early than I would like, and she's in bed usually around 8 pm. I've started telling her that she needs to stay in her room until I am ready to get up - if she comes in to wake me up and wants to go downstairs and it's before 7 am, she will be told to go back to her room and stay there. She can come out to go potty but that's it. Then she asked me if she was in her room if it was okay to turn the lamp on so she could read some books - I told her that was fine, as long as she stayed in her room and stayed quiet. Before she wanted to go downstairs and watch some TV, which if it wasn't super-early I would be okay with, but she was getting up earlier and earlier and then wanting me up and downstairs with her because "she didn't want to be alone." So I had to start putting my foot down and expecting her stay in her room, while "reading" books would be okay. So far, so good.