One YO Waking Very Early!

I agree with the post about following Dr. Weissbluth's advice. Never wake a sleeping baby, don't restrict his naps and try to get him to bed by 6:30 at night. I have a 21 month old and a 6 month old and both sleep from about 6:30 pm to 7-7:15 am (the 6 month old wakes once for a bottle). Sleep equals sleep. The more sleep you give him, the more he will sleep and you will all be much happier and less tired!

Good luck!

Sleep begets sleep, so restricting his naps will likely make the situation worse. The book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy child" by Mark Weisblut is great. I would try getting him to sleep a little earlier and also just leave him when he wakes at 5 and let him go back to sleep. he will likely make some noise etc but eventually will fall back to sleep. My little one sometimes wakes and talks to her animals and then she will go back to sleep. She is 13 months and has been doing that for some time now.

Read Dr. Weisbuth's book on sleep. Healthy sleeping habits, happy baby. You NEED to get your baby to bed at night much earlier for at least 10 nights in a row and you will see how much later he gets up in the morning. A baby at his age needs on average 15 hours of sleep a day....12 hours at night and his 2 daily naps. DO NOT restrict his day naps. The reason he is getting up early is because he is not getting enough sleep. I know it sounds backwards but I promise you it is the truth. Do yourself a favor and either get the book or go online and see what the Dr. has to say. He is a dr. at Northwestern and it is the #1 best seller for sleep. Remember it takes a little over a week to see the permanent change so dont give up too early. Good Luck!

Try to get him to bed earlier. I put mine to bed at 7:00pm, sometimes she doesn't fall asleep for an hour but she is laying in bed by herself. Also at one year, her morning nap was an hour, and afternoon 1-3 hours depending on the day.
Restricting the morning nap seems to help.
Also, don't go get him until it's time to get up. Sometimes my daughter wakes up early but I don't get her until 7am.
Good Luck :)

It sounds like he is not getting enough sleep- I agree about putting him down earlier. What time are his naps? You might move those around too.

Try putting him to bed earlier. It really does work - also, depending how old he is, he might be ready to move to one nap, in the early afternoon. That will make his bedtime earlier too(because he will tired earlier).

I second the advice another poster gave - put him to bed earlier. Just try moving it earlier by about 15 - 30 minutes or so each day.

If he wakes up in the early morning, how do you react? Do you give him a few minutes to try to fall back asleep? Try letting him fuss and fidget a little bit.

You may also wish to read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Dr. Marc Weissbluth. Even if you never want to use any of the techniques in the book or you disagree with his methods, you will at least learn a lot about when infants/children should be going to sleep, how long they should be sleeping, signs and signals of when it is time to put them to bed, and a host of other valuable information.

From my own personal experience and what I have read, the more overtired my son is, the less he sleeps at night. For example, he missed his afternoon nap yesterday and woke up an hour earlier this morning than usual. Usually, if he takes two 2 hour naps a day and goes down at 8:00 PM, he will sleep until atleast 6:30-7:00 AM. This is consistant UNLESS he is overtired for some reason. So, my suggestion to you is let him sleep as long as he needs to during the day and try an earlier bedtime and I bet he'll sleep later! Actually, I'll promise that he will! :)

He seems to be pretty set in his sleep habits. Since you are a working M., most of those that I know have to get up very early, so how about adjusting your wake up time to his? For his part, Dad will have to put up with a little during this transition time. Two one hour naps is not enough, and certainly can't be made any shorter. Maybe he is overtired, is he crabby for the sitter? You can try nursing him at 5am and then putting him back in his crib and letting him cry it out, since you will probably have things to do to get ready for work. He will adjust to this routine in a week or two.

Put him to bed earlier and he'll sleep later...strange I know, but it works.

My son started doing that too at about a year. I found that the only reason he was waking up was because he was thirsty. I now put a sippy cup with water in his crib with him (after he's fallen asleep). So when he does wake up at 5, he drinks from the sippy cup and goes back to sleep until 7:30.

it could be when we changed time. make sure his room curtains or shades are dark enough. If it gets to much light he thinks it's later.

At this age, he should be sleeping twelve hours at night and taking one or two naps during the day that last at least an hour. My son who is a year old tried getting up earlier a couple weeks ago, and my pediatrician told me I have to go in put in on his back and tell him to go back to bed. My son's bedtime is always 6:30 or 7 and he doesn't get up for the day until twelve hours later. He tries sometimes, but I don't let him. This morning for example, he woke up at six, so I went in in the dark and put him back down. He cried for a little while, but he eventually went back to sleep. He woke up much more refreshed and happier. If you don't control this now, your son will be trained to be an early riser. Twelve hours is important at this age. It will take a couple days for him to change his ways, but I promise it will happen eventually and you will all be happier in the long run.

i'm big on letting the kids take the lead. if he is tired or falling asleep for 2 one-hour naps during the day, then he needs the sleep. if he is doing fine, playing or what-have-you, then don't him down for those naps. it could be that he's ready for only one longer nap, maybe? and if doesn't go to sleep until 8:30-9:00, i don't think that's so late. both of my daughters went to bed when we went to bed until they were 2-3 years old (anywhere from 8:30-10:30 pm). the later they were in bed, the longer they slept in the morning (within about an hours time span...so generally woke up between 7-8 unless they went to bed before 8:30). just my two cents!

We are experiencing the same issue as you, so for 4 days I tried the 1 nap/day...it backfired. We are back to 2 naps; I let her sleep no more then 1.5 hours to make sure she takes her pm nap. It seems that your son's bedtime is too late; push it back slowly by 15 minutes until you find the best bedtime for him. Also, you might want to get block out shades for his windows (we got ours at home depot).

I had this problem with my oldest after our baby was born. My oldest was about 18 months at the time. She was waking at 4am, still tired and would sometimes fall back asleep in our bed or on the couch. After about a month of this we decided she was just waking to be with us, so we decided that we would just not go in her room until 6am no matter what. AFter a few mornings of her crying for us for a bit and then either falling back asleep or just talking until 6am, she starting sleeping later since she knew we weren't coming in. Don't know if you'll be able to let your child cry it out, but it helped us after only a few days. Wish we had done it sooner.

My son did the same thing around the same age. He was waking up ridiculously early, despite having his normal nap schedule during the day. I would definitely recommend letting him sleep as long as he needs to for his naps during the day (which it sounds like you are already doing). And then what we tried was to put a few more things to occupy him in his crib. He loves books, so we put a few books in his bed at night, and also he has a soft leap frog caterpillar that plays music and teaches colors. Also we put a sippy cup of water in his bed too. So he started waking up and entertaining himself rather than crying to get out of bed. More often than not, he would play for awhile then fall back asleep. Now he's 20 months and is back to sleeping until at least 6-6:30, sometimes even 7. :)

My son was about 9 or 10 months having the same problem and even though he had always gone to bed late, I started putting him down a lot earlier anyway and now he always sleeps better. I can put him down at 6:30 and he will sleep until 6 or 6:30 most mornings. If I put him down later now, he has problems in general sleeping and gets up around 5 or 5:30. Even though it seems strange to start putting your baby down earlier, it worked wonders for us. He sleeps so much better now and still takes two naps every day - it made me realize how tired he must have been before! (And it gave us extra alone time in the evenings, which can be nice) Good luck!!

Read "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Dr. Marc Weisbluth. It will change everything! At only 12 mos old, you really need to get your baby to sleep much earlier--probably closer to 630p. The first night we put that into practice (going to bed at 530pm vs. 730pm), our baby slept through the night (she was 9 mos old when she finally slept more than 5 hours). She's 22 months old now and still gets 10-12 hours per night, plus at least 3 hours for nap during the day. Sleep patterns will change as they get older, so make sure to at least read up to the point and try a little ahead of what age your child is. Sleep begets sleep--the more he has at night, the better his naps will be too. The better his naps are, the better his night time will be... Good luck!