The Early Riser! (Part 2 of 3 sleep blogs)
Written by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant
Early waking can be a very common issue at this time of the year - the mornings getting lighter earlier can trigger our little ones in to thinking that it is time to wake up! However, for some children it can happen at any time of the year and can be a very difficult thing to resolve.
First of all, it is important to clarify that if your child wakes before 6am this is classed as early waking. Anything past 6am can be expected from young children and the idea of a child sleeping 7pm to 7am is just not the case for some children! However, waking before 6am it not ideal for any child as they are likely to be overtired during the day and this will then start to impact on their behaviour and approach to their day, which is really something that we want to try and avoid.
Why are early wakings common?
Between 4am and 6am is when your child (and often adults) find it hardest to fall back to sleep. Your child has had some of their deepest sleep by this time and so aren’t as tired as they were at the beginning of the night. Their sleep pattern is getting lighter which means that they can be roused more easily and can find it more difficult to send themselves back off to sleep. However, this doesn’t mean that they can’t sleep any longer it just means that they need to have the right sleep conditions in order to fall back to sleep.
Do you have an Early Riser?
If the answer to this is yes, then you first of all need think about your reaction to their early alarm call – do you respond any differently to if they were to wake in the middle of the night, say 1am for example? If so, the good news is that this is easy to remedy. Any waking pre 6am needs to be treated in the same way that you would treat a ‘middle of the night’ waking, so what you do in the night to get them to go back to sleep is what you need to repeat for this early waking.
Very often parents will just feel that this is their lot and they just have a child who wakes early and so will get up with their child pre-6am or let them play etc. However, this can be the issue as it sets the child’s body clock to wake at that time and it just becomes their normal, in a similar way to when we set our alarm to get up for work; it is not our natural waking time, but if it happens every morning it becomes our habit and so even at weekends you can end up waking at the same time you do for work even if you don’t need to! However, if you have the right sleep conditions, you will be able to fall back to sleep and this is the same for our little ones. Here is the not so good news - if you are looking for a quick fix on this issue, there isn’t one! You need to reset your child’s body clock (their circadian rhythm) and this is not something that happens in a couple of days. You will need to be consistent in your approach for at least 2 weeks to see the benefits and changes.
Here is a checklist of things to look at in relation to your child and their early waking (I have put some more specific points for older children a bit later in the blog).
Darkness - Is your child’s room dark throughout the night? A way to check this is to go into your child’s room at the middle of the day when it is at its brightest, draw the curtains / pull down the blind, turn out the light and put your hand up in front of you - if you can see your hand in front of you then the room is too light. Look at installing blackout blinds or curtains, but if you can’t have these for any reason then get creative and use cardboard at the window or black out material stuck to the window frames. Darkness is one of the key factors in keeping us asleep because it keeps our melatonin, our sleep hormone, levels higher.
What time is bedtime? You are probably expecting me to say to put your little one to bed later to help them sleep later, but this is actually not going to be my advice. It is possibly the case that you need to bring bedtime forward by 15mins to see if that helps. Getting overtired has a detrimental effect on sleep - if your child is going to bed when they are too tired, they are likely to fall asleep very quickly, but then wake early because they were too tired and didn’t have the chance to switch off / wind down enough prior to falling asleep at the start of the evening.
Bedtime routine - Do you have a bedtime routine? Having one helps to settle your child down for the night. Typical bedtimes are between 7pm and 8pm but sometimes this is too late for your child. If your child is going to bed at 7pm and you have an early riser you might need to look at bring bedtime forward to 6.45pm. Early to bed very rarely means early to rise!
Self-Settle - Does your child self-settle to sleep or do they need you there to help them to go off to sleep? If you child is not able to self-settle then this is something to work on as this is a technique your child will need in order for them to be able to go back to sleep when they wake in the night or early in the morning. Any waking between 4-6am is when your child needs to try and self-settle to stay asleep and in this respect you want to limit the amount of stimulation that they are getting at this time. If your child is used to resettling themselves, you won’t need to go in to them to help meaning that there is one less stimulant for them.
Temperature - At around 3-4am what is the temperature like in your child’s room? This is the coldest part of the night and so can often be when (and why) your child wakes.
External noises - are there external noises such as a boiler starting or one member of the household getting up before 6am? Is this disturbing your child in their lightest sleep phase? If so then it might be worth considering white noise in order to help disguise the external noise and help your little one sleep through.
Daytime naps - What are your child’s naps in the day like? Often we cut naps to make the child more tired so that they will sleep longer at night. This, as you have probably gathered by now, is actually not the case and, as I have mentioned before, often early waking is due to over tiredness. Perhaps your child is having an early nap in the day due to their early wake up? If so then this also might not be helping the situation. Moving the morning nap back to a reasonable time of the day for the child’s age will help to get back to a normal waking time.
Hunger - How much is your little one eating? Are they hungry? You need to try and make sure that your child is getting all of their calories during the day.* If you think that the early waking is due to hunger, you need to look at reviewing the day to see if you can increase milk feeds (if your child is still having milk feeds) or looking at what is being offered for solids – is it filling enough? Are you giving slow releasing carb foods in the evening as this can also help!
* It is important to note that young babies need to have feeds during the night, but as your baby gets older they should be getting their nutrients and calories during their waking hours.
You will hear lots of people talking about ‘wake windows’ (see below for more of an explanation of this) and you need to make sure that your child has had a full wake window before going back down for a nap. By giving them an early morning nap you are cementing the early waking as this will become your child’s daily routine. You should try to get your child on a nap schedule which is appropriate for their age, taking it from the ideal wake time, not the early morning wake time.
o Is your little one having too many naps? If your child is still having 3 naps in the day it might be time to pull this back to 2 naps and if your child is still on 2 naps it might be worth looking at making it one. Don’t cut down to one nap before your child is at least 12 months old, keeping two naps for as long as possible is recommended!
o Are naps too short? What are the lengths of the naps? Your little one needs to have good restorative naps in the day in order to have good quality sleep at night.
o Where is your little one sleeping during their day time naps? Are they always in the car or the pram for example? If so then it is worth looking at making about 80% of your child’s naps in a week to be in their own cot or bed. This is when the most restorative sleep takes place and they will wake feeling refreshed and ready for the next stage of their day. This leaves you with 20% of the week where naps can be taken out and about.
What are Wake Windows and how do naps work?
This is a buzz word of the moment and often people get caught up in what this actually means. A wake window is the length of time that your little one is awake between naps. These wake windows are worth considering, as if the timing is out they can stop your little one being over tired or not tired enough for a nap and, in either case, this can then mean that naps are not successful or they are very short. The ideal wake windows depend on your child’s age (please note these are average times so your baby might vary slightly to these guidelines):
You are looking for signs of sleepiness to alert you to the fact that your child needs to sleep and you need to read these signals – these might be your baby staring into space, turning away, yawning or getting agitated. If you are a parent who says “my baby just doesn’t need much sleep” you need to look at your baby’s naps and then their night time sleeping…all of us need sleep! By reviewing your nap schedule and night times you will hopefully find that your baby will sleep and that you will see that they do need it!
When putting your little one down for a nap it is important that there is a routine which is similar to your routine at night. This might be closing the curtains, putting on their sleeping bag and singing part of a song or saying a particular phrase that you use. Taking your little one straight from playing to lying them in their cot, without any sort of routine to prepare them for what is happening, means that they can be more unsettled. They need to have these sleep associations (have a look at the first in our series of sleep blogs for more of an explanation of sleep associations) to trigger relaxing into the sleep process.
Older children:
Your response to the early wake with older children is something which needs to be consistent and clear, explaining that it is night-time and encouraging them to go back to sleep.
Don’t get them up and doing things too early. If they have woken early, try to keep them in their room in the dark and quiet so that they continue to get the message that that it is night-time. Once you have got to post 6am then you want to turn the light on, open the curtains and change your approach so that you are giving a clear message that it is now morning and time to get up.
If you have a night light on a timer (ideally the colour red) which you set to come on for a certain time don’t make this unachievable to start with. If your child is typically waking at 5am then set the light for 5.10/5.15am for the first couple of days, then gradually move this on by 10-15 mins every few days. This will then help to get your little one to set their body clock to a later wake up time.
Older children have a greater understanding so you can have conversations with them about staying in their bed in the mornings making sure that there is plenty of praise and recognition for when they do this.
For all ages:
Wake (but more stir) to sleep
This method is when you go to bed yourself, you go into your child’s and very slightly rouse them. This might be by tucking them back in or even just go into the room, which causes them to stir/roll over etc. You don’t want to fully wake them, but just to cause them to stir. This method can help to shift your little one’s sleep cycle and for some children can help them to sleep longer and avoid the early waking.
The impact of lack of sleep because of early risers can take its toll on the whole family. As I have said, there aren’t any ‘quick fixes’ as such, but making a few adjustments and being consistent in your approach can really make all the difference and result in the whole family getting a bit more sleep!
The final blog in our series of sleep blogs is all about older children – including looking at devices and their impact and adapting bedtime routines so that they are age appropriate.
For more information about sleep you might be interested in our sleep webinar - ‘Your Guide to Sleep’ - click here to find out more!
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