Question
How can I get my son to sleep longer?
It seems every day my 2 year old son is getting up earlier and earlier. I have no idea why this is happening, but today he woke up at 4:45 AM. He goes to bed between 7:30 and 8 every night, we have a very consistent routine. He used to sleep until almost 7 in the morning, but now it's just getting earlier every day. I am exhausted... help!
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6 Answers
Have you considered taking a later afternoon nap and putting him to bed later in the evening? He could be waking up because by 4:45 a.m. he has already gotten 9.5 hours of sleep. That is ALOT for a 2 year old (my son is two also). I have found that moving his nap to 3:30 in the afternoon and his bedtime to 9:00 p.m. assures me that he will sleep until 7:00 a.m. Now, while you will have to give up some of your "free" time in the evening, the sleep is worth it.
Good luck!
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I have found with toddlers it is easiest to use the sun as a
guide. If the sun isn't up and it is still pretty dark, you can
"shh, shh, it's ok, go back to sleep." Once the sun comes up, it
is ok for them to be up. A lot of times this can buy you an extra
hour or two and he should get back in a later routine. Good luck!
I try to tell him that it's not time to get up and that he needs to go back to sleep, but he will just scream that he wants to get up. Yesterday I put him to bed at 9 instead of 7:30 and he woke up at 4:45! I just don't know how to get him to understand that it's not time to get up. He is clearly tired when he's waking up too. We've even tried bringing him into the bed with us, but then he thinks it's time to play. I am running out of ideas!
Thank you so much for your idea about telling him about the sun. I had a good talk with him last night before bed explaining that when he wakes up if it is still dark in his room that means that it's still bedtime. I even had him repeat it back to me to make sure he understood. This morning I heard him wake up around 4 and say "It's dark... bedtime". Then I didn't hear him again until 5:45! I was so happy. This was only day one of trying that so I am hoping that after a few days he will get used to sleeping later again. Thank you so much!!!
I'm no help (I have one son - 3 1/2 months old), but I just read this and thought it was so cute! Love that you hear him wake up and say "It's dark...bedtime!" Adorable!
I know this will sound crazy, but our son did the exact same thing. The only reason we could find was the light that was beginning to break as a reason he would wake up. It did not matter what time we put him to bed.
SO....we finally put aluminum foil up in his windows behind the blinds. I was VERY reluctant, but gave in after too many early mornings & guess what? IT WORKED!! I very quickly got over the fact it looked like an alien lived in his room from the outside.
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