Is Your Child Experiencing Too Early Wake Ups?

Is your baby or toddler waking too early? Have early morning wake-ups been an issue, or especially exasperated since the end of daylight savings?  If so, it is likely your child’s body needs help adjusting to the new clock time.  How do you make this adjustment?  In simple terms, it is a matter of manipulating light exposure in both the evening and the morning, but there are a few things to consider first. If your child had a predictable sleep schedule prior to changing the clocks back with a set bedtime and wake time, then likely changing times of light and dark exposure will help shift your child’s body clock. If this is not the case, then this approach alone will not fix the problem.  You may want to consider an individualized sleep consult to create a plan that addresses things such as schedule, environment or a sleep association. If it is simply about light and dark exposure here is the scoop on how to fix it:

Light at night and absence of light in the morning is critical to helping your child sleep longer in the morning.  Why? The circadian rhythm, a main driving force for sleep, is very sensitive to light, especially in the early morning hours. If your child has been waking earlier than desired, and has been exposed to light either because their room is too light or they are leaving their dark room, their early wake time has been “locked in”, even though your child’s body may need to sleep longer.  How much light is too much? The bedroom should be so dark in the morning that you are unable to tell the difference from the middle of the night to the morning hours in the room.  If the room is dark, then the key is to keep your child in the room until the target wake time.  How do you do that?  There are two ways.  The first way is to allow your child to wake and keep them in the sleep space until the target time, despite protests. The second option is to go into your child’s room and lay down next to the crib or bed and stay with them until the target wake time.  With consistency, the process usually takes 4 to 7 days.

In order to instill the later wake up in the morning, you will also need to increase your child’s light exposure at night.  Make sure to keep the house and bedroom as bright as possible up until bedtime.  For older children it may even require that you push bedtime later by 30-60 minutes to add additional light exposure.  This will help the body adjust to the new time change.  As we previously noted, this is the simple explanation for your child waking too early, but sleep can be complicated, so if these adjustments don’t warrant a change, professional sleep support may be needed to get your family the improved sleep your looking for.

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