What to do When Your Child Begins to Wake Early
So you finally get your child sleeping well at night, naps are on course, and all is well. Then all of a sudden, it’s 5 am, and your child is awake, ready for the day. Safe to say, you are NOT ready for the day to start that early!
How early is too early?
The answer to this is highly subjective. You may be an early riser yourself, so having your child wake early might not be an issue. But if your child has previously been waking at 7 and suddenly is waking at 5, then the difference of two hours could be classed as too early- especially if bedtime hasn’t been altered at all.
Generally speaking, if your child is waking after 6 am, it’s usually considered a ‘normal’ wake-up time for most.
Why is baby waking early?
There are many reasons why a child’s sleep can suddenly be disrupted- teething, illness, traveling, sleep regressions, and disturbances in the sleeping environment. But if you can rule out all of these reasons and your child is still waking early, then it’s no wonder you’re pulling your hair out!
If your child wakes early now and then, and you can safely choose one of the above reasons as the cause, there really is no reason to worry. Most children will return to their usual sleeping patterns as soon as they resolve the issue that disrupts the first place. However, if you find that you cannot blame any of the above and your child is waking early regularly, read on for my top three tips on dealing with it.
- Keep a log of your whole day. The first thing I always recommend to families who come to me with this issue is to take a look at the whole daily schedule over a period of at least one week. Only then will you be able to recognize the potential reasons for your child’s early wakings. It might be that your routine needs a tweak and that perhaps nap times need moving around a little. It might be that nap times are too long or that your child is ready to transition to just one nap. You won’t know until you keep a log of your whole day and can comb through it all.
- Check your bedtime routine. Many parents are tempted to move bedtime back a little to encourage their child to sleep in a little the next day, but it just doesn’t happen like that, unfortunately. If you move bedtime back, not only are you shortening your own evening, but you’re also creating an overtired child who will find it harder to settle into a restful sleep- and who is more likely to wake even earlier the next day!
- Treat the early mornings as a night waking. If your routine is tight and you know that your entire daytime schedule is on target for a longer sleep at bedtime, then the next step is to view the early wakings as a night waking and not as a time to get up for the day. Instead of resigning yourself to a 5 am get-up, employ your usual night wake-up strategies, soothing your child back to sleep again. Of course, this all reinforces to your child that it’s not yet time to get up. Even if they don’t fall back asleep, you’re delaying their start to the day.
Early mornings are one of the hardest things to tweak, as it takes a long time to see results.
Hang in there.
