Toddler Wakes up Too Early!

Just let her cry herself back to sleep. Don't even go in her room. It will only take a few days, but she will go back to sleep.
Good luck!

Dear L.,
Keep her up until 8:30.
If she still takes a bottle, put baby cereal in it.
You'll have to split the nipple slightly. A full tummy
makes for a better sleep time.
Good Luck with whatever you decide,
C. S.

Oh wow!!! I feel you sleep deprivation. Well maybe make her bedtime a little later and have her do more physical activities. Some children do not require as much sleep. And she is getting a decent amount. When she wakes up, is she ready to get up or can you do some soothing techniques to put her back to sleep? I am sure you have tried that. Maybe knocking back her bedtime to 8 and more physical activities during the day. Does she take long naps? That may be why she don't sleep as long at night.
Good luck and best wishes

Hi L.,

My suggestion is putting her down later at night.

V.

It seems to me, your only option is to put her to bed later and possibly adjust her nap schedule as well. As you probably know, she only requires a certain amount of sleep everyday which is made up of both nap and bedtime sleeping. My 2 1/2 year old daughter goes to bed between 8-8:30 every night and gets up between 6:30-7:00. She goes down for nap at 12:00 and will sleep for 3 hours. she's been doing this for as long as I can remember. It'll be interesting what other advise you get. Good luck to both of you.

My Daughter did the same thing, I changed her bed time to a latter time, and now she sleeps until about 7:30am.

Put her to bed later. Around 7p you can get her tired...play around, and then around 7:45 or so wind down with a story or other calming activity. Then put her to bed around 8p or 8:15p. She will get back to a more normal wake-up time. Of course, some children are just early risers. I think for that though, it would be around 5a.m. Good luck & God Bless You & your sleep!

My 19 1/2 month old has started to do the same thing! I was up at 4:30am this morning and rocked her back to sleep a couple of times before she stayed down. Then woke back up at 6am!

She used to sleep from 7:30-6:30 or 7 easily.

Maybe it's a time in their development that their brains are really expanding because this morning she also shocked me by counting to 6 on her own!!! WOW!

Let's just hang in there, and let them know that we are there for them.

I know you have a lot of responses but here is mine! My 1 year old sometimes does the same thing..I bring her into bed with me and she will sleep till 6:15. Occasionally I will leave her and she will go back to sleep on her own. People always say to adjust the bedtime , but for my daughter that didnt work. No matter what time she goes to bed she still wakes at 6:15 ish. For the 4:30 wakeups I bring her into bed with me.

If you think about it, 7:30 pm to 5:30 am is just 10 hours of sleep. A girl of almost 2 years old needs about 14 hours, but she'll probably have a nap or two during the day, right? It probably won't hurt her to lose a little sleep. All people have natural sleep patterns, maybe she is just a morning person.
I bet you want some morning time sleep though, so there are a couple of techniques you can try. Let her stay up later for a couple of nights and wake up early so she will have less sleep than she wants. That should encourage her to stay in bed. You could also just do the "it's still night time" routine, which worked for my son. He kept wanting to wake up really early and so I told him that it was still night night. I took him back to his bed and sat with him in his room until he was comfortable, then I went back to my bed. He would usually sleep for a good two hours before waking me up again. Just try putting her back in bed and if she cries you can check on her every 15 minutes just like when you were teaching her to go to bed at night. Make sure that she isn't having a late nap and then going to bed at 7:30 pm too, that would give her a big block of sleep all at once and that could account for her waking up so much earlier. Good luck and I hope you get some of your morning hours back.

I would go in and check her diaper and make sure she is comfortable and then put her back to bed. Explain it is still sleep time and make her stay in her room. May I also suggest removing any toys in her room so that her only option are some stuffed animals or books. That way she isn't stimulated by noisy toys if she does get up early. It sounds like her biological clock is set to a too early time. Also, consider how bright her room is first thing in the morning. If the sun is shining in at 5 a.m. it may help to hang some black out curtains. If those tactics fail maybe you could adjust her bed time. I wouldn't go any later than 8 p.m. though. Try to get her to do some play time outside or anywhere you can get her some physical activity after her afternoon naps too. That way she will be more ready for rest

Good Luck!

M.
www.sittersnow.com

Keep putting her down later and later... our 12 month old goes down at 9 or even 9:30 and wakes up at about 6:30, sounds like around the same hours your little gal sleeps at night, just the awake part is on the opposite end! I do miss the evenings to myself having her up so late (I am ready to fall into bed as soon as she is out) but it is better than the alternative, the 4 or 5 a.m. wake up call, which is what you have.
Actually, she does wake up at 4 a.m. still sometimes, a couple times a week. I try to soothe her back to sleep- pop a paci in her mouth and rock her for a few minutes. When I am too tired to do that I just bring her in our bed and lay her down between me and my husband, just like some of the other moms said, pretending to be back to sleep and she eventually she falls back too.
I realize your daughter is older than mine, so maybe these methods don't apply. Some of the mom's who have been through that age before made it sound like it might just be a passing phase... hope so! Good luck.

Every month a baby changes.

Okay, my son used to do that to, at certain developmental leaps. He would wake up all bright eyed and ready to play. BUT, I just laid him back down, laid next to him, didn't talk to him, didn't interact, just kept silent, kept the room dark & didn't turn on any lights, I didn't get up myself, I didn't "greet" him with good mornings... I just "pretended" to go back to sleep myself. I would only tell him "sleep" and told him to stay by me. THEN, after fiddling around next to me, (and I"m just laying there like a log), he'd go back to sleep, and then wake up at his usual time.

This "phase" passed. It was due to his developmental leaps and changes. It was temporary. In my case.

Just KEEP up with your routine, put her to sleep at the SAME time as usual, the SAME way, and same everything. It should pass.

For me, my son sleeps in a crib. But IF he wakes up, then I co-sleep with him on a futon in our room. That is just my routine. Everyone is different.

Good luck,
~Susan
www.cafepress.com/littlegoogoo

I TOTALLY AGREE WITH S.H.! (the first response)
I have also done what she's done and that definitely helps us work through it.
When my 2yr old son wakes up too early I try to rock him or lay with him and if that doesn't work, I just let him cry if it's just attention crying. He eventually falls back asleep or plays quietly. His molars are also coming in, so sometimes I'll give him something for that. Girls tend to have a higher pain tolerance, maybe check her mouth for new teeth?
The other thing that helps is aroma therapy, Arbonne has "unwind", which really calms him down, but you can also find some natural remedies in a health food store including aroma therapy. Not that I'm trying to promote my business, but if you want that "unwind" let me know, (I love telling people because the products really work!). Good Luck!

a lot of babes start to do this..when my son does this i put him to bed later..actually he used to go to bed at 9pm..now i have him going to bed at 8:30pm...when he was starting to wake earlier..which he did once again recently..i set the alarm and i don't go in til then..so if your babe is waking at 4am..i would give her a drink or even a bottle..yep..i said it..a bottle..and change her if she seems wet..then put her back to bed..i have the mindset that any time before 6am is too early ..i refuse to get up in the 6's..so my alarm is set for 7:30am i usually wake around 7:15 ..so now my son sleeps in til 7:30 b/c he knows if he wakes earlier i'm not going to let him up to play.
i would just start slowly..put her to bed 15 minutes later tonight and go in 15 to 30 minutes later in the morning...til you get her on the right time schedule..and if she's getting a lot of sleep in the day that could be contributing to the problem.

L.,
Is there something waking her up at 4am? Do your neighbor's have a motion-detector light? Is there a cat that always "meow's" or a dog that "barks" to be let in at that time? Does she cry when she wakes, or is she just awake, babbling? If so, have you tried putting things on the opposite side of her crib to keep her entertained? I used to leave puzzles and hard books at the foot of their crib (by the time they were 21 months, they weren't sleeping all of their crib). My son woke up earlier than I wanted him to; he wouldn't cry, just be up. He'd read, play with some toys - entertain himself (kinda of like what we do when we can't sleep) and then get drowsy and fall back to sleep.
I would also heed the other advice and determine if she is napping for too long. Usually, anything over 1 1/2 hours can really screw up a child's sleep patterns.
J.

See if putting her to bed later and/or eliminating a nap helps. Every child is different. With my older 2, if they stayed up late they'd get up even earlier! With my younger 2, staying up late means sleeping in.

If you move her bedtime and eliminate naps and she still does this, she's just enjoying the fact that she can get Mom and Dad up. Her room should be childproof, so put a safety gate at the door, set an alarm clock for 6:00 (or whatever you decide), and tell her that if she wakes up before the alarm goes off, she has to play quietly in her room. For a day or two she'll probably stand at the gate and yell. Then, she'll either decide that she'll play quietly, or she'll decide that waking up that early has lost its fun factor, and she'll sleep later

Put her down at 8:30 and don't get up and giver her atention before 7 am.

S.

OK, I am going against the grain here, I guess....but I have to say what I know to be true for itty bitty kiddos: put them to bed earlier and they sleep later. I am not kidding. It works. It doesn't work that way for adults and I am not sure when it stops working (maybe age 4 or so). This may explain why putting her down later resulted in the early wake ups....?

I also agree Terri (the first response) about not getting up before 6am...I try to do that too. I am confident it will get worked out...these things tend to come and go in waves. Good luck.

Hi L., Well sorry to burst your bubble but i personally think your child is in bed too early. Try to keep her up til 8:30. Good Luck! :)

Well, my kid is a night owl, so naturally we have the opposite problem -- she's a late sleeper and it's tough on school days! (thought you might enjoy laughing at my expense).

I actually do have a suggestion -- even given that my little owlet won't go to sleep before 9 or even later most nights, I can remember her waking up ridiculously early a few times in the toddler years. We just kept lights out, responded very quietly and gently, said briefly that it was night-time & sleep-time, not play-time, put our heads down and looked like we went back to sleep. She tried a bit to get a game going, but pretty soon she just laid her head down and went back to sleep too. It didn't last long, that phase.

You can probably glean that we were all in the same bed, which does keep the movement to a minimum. No having to get up and wake fully up to go get the crying little one makes it pretty easy to get back to sleep, and the baby doesn't get too stimulated. As I always say, I realize not everyone wants to do that, but it worked for us, and we all got good sleep.

Good luck,
Colleen

Wear her out during the day. No naps after the exercise. So, if that means, taking her out to the park at 4:30, then off to go grocery shopping at 5:30 pm, try that. It worked for me!
When my kids would start to fall asleep in the car I would not let them!! I'd joke with them, reach around grab there little foot, play music, sing etc. Get home, eat, bath, read, bed.
It takes so long to regulate some kids internal clocks. My son is 8 and I still am playing that game! But, don't forget sometimes running around too much gets them in that mode and down time at home is crucial too.

My son is the exact same way. I let him cry a couple of minutes before going in. When I go to his room I hold him and tell him it's still night night time and it's time to go back to sleep. I lay him back down. Of corse he jumps up and start crying at me. I leave the room and let him cry for 5 minutes, go back in there tell him everyone is sleeping & it's night night time. Let him cry for 10 so on and so on. It takes me a couple of days to get him back to sleeping until 6. My rule is I'm not getting anyone up until 6. If he wakes up at 5:45 I don't even go in there. He now knows if I don't come in it must be time to go back to sleep. He goes through stages. Establish what's best for you and stick to a routine. it's hard in the begining, but they get it.
good luck

T. H