Early waking

Does your child always wake before dawn? We have some tips that might help you get a sleep in.

How do I keep my child sleeping past dawn?

Aah! The million dollar question! At what point is it reasonable to expect your child will sleep until a more respectable hour in the morning? When can you kiss the sunrise goodbye?

First, (and sadly for some) every child is different and your child may just be a naturally early riser. For these children, try one the following strategies which may allow you to have an extra half hour's sleep-in:

• Put a clock beside his/her bed and either teach him/her the basics of telling the time, or draw him/her a picture of what the clock face looks like when he/she's allowed to get up.
• Make sure that his/her room stays dark. There's nothing faster at waking a slumbering child than the sun streaming into his/her room. If his/her room captures all the morning light, make sure that the window coverings are heavy. You could try adding a 10 per cent block-out lining to the existing curtains, or put up a set of curtains over a blind.
• Don't expect him/her to go to bed early and sleep late. Most pre-schoolers need between 10-12 hours of sleep at night, so if he/she's still keeping the bedtime of his babyhood - asleep at 7pm - you probably have to expect that she will wake early. Perhaps try making his/her bedtime a little later to encourage a later start to the day.
• Keep the house quiet. Once upon a time, your child slept on through all sorts of household noise. Those days are long gone, so if you or your partner has to get up early, try pulling his/her door closed and keeping noise to a minimum.

How to shift bedtime:

If you decide that the key to a more reasonable waking time is to shift your child's bedtime to a little later, try this:

• Your child will adjust to the move easiest if you change his/her bedtime in small increments. Try moving it by quarter of an hour at a time.
• Sleep rhythms can take a week or two to change (just think about how long it takes to adjust to daylight saving each year) so expect it to take a couple of weeks before you see any change to his sleep patterns in the morning.
• Once you've settled into the 15 minute change, try another 15 minutes. Keep going until you reach a bed time that is appropriate for your child.

TIP!

Don't let him/her watch TV in the early hours of the morning as a way of allowing you to get some extra sleep - you may find that this activity actually encourages him/her to wake earlier and earlier.