Nearly 3 year old early waking.. any advice?

[Spamelina]

DS will be 3 in a couple of weeks but we have been struggling with ridiculously early waking for the last few weeks now.  He's always been an early riser but we got to about 6.30am at one point which I thought was great (anything after 6am is good in my book!).. but now we are back to consistent wake ups of about 5.20am or earlier, this morning it was 4.50! 

He just gets up at that time and wanders about the upstairs landing.  We continuously put him back to bed over and over again but it just doesn't work.  I usually end up getting up with him by 6am desperately trying not to wake up DS1 (5yrs) who will be back at school next week and needs his sleep. We've tried gro-clock, doesn't work, he just ignores it or switches it off himself!

He's waaay too tired during the day, his behaviour is getting worse and by about 11am he's flinging himself around the place and is very overtired.  He usually has a nap of about an hour at 1ish but is nearly always grumpy when he wakes up, goes to bed at about 7pm but recently has also started resisting bedtime and is taking until nearly 8 to get to sleep.  So in all he's only getting about 10 hours sleep a day which cant be enough!!

Feels like we are in a vicious cycle of overtiredness and I just don't know what to do!!  If he naps any longer he's even worse at bed time.  To add to the mix he starts preschool next week, 3 x afternoons a week where he won't be able to nap all day.  Part of me is hoping that is what finally makes him sleep longer at night...!

At our wits end and don't know what else to try!!!  Any suggestions?!

[Spamelina]

Meant to add.. he also resists nap time, wont sleep in his bed during the day now so we usually have to resort to timing a drive somewhere so he sleeps in the car..  I just rather we were past the napping stage altogether!

[Haribo2012]

Hi there we are in a similar boat as DS2 turns 3 in 3 weeks. A lot is to do with developmental leaps that happen around birthdays and half birthdays.

My DS2 has stopped napping at 2.5yrs but seems to nod off at the drop of a hat now but then resists BT.

I’d try to restrict your DS nap to 20 mins and try an earlier BT as OT often creates the EW.

Would he go back to sleep if you popped him in with you at the EW? I know it’s prob not what you want and with my DS1 (now 6yrs) we never allowed this but he was chronic EW and we ended up being up at 5am for well over a year. With DS2 as like you mentioned DS1 needs his sleep for school so we let DS2 in bed with us and he will go back to sleep until we get up. Not ideal but we all get sleep.
DS2 was an amazing sleeper until about 3 months ago and now it’s all gone to pot lol, he’s been at school since he was 2 and on those 3 days BT is the easiest as no nap and shattered.

[Spamelina]

Yes, I'm really hoping that the fact that he's forced to have 3 days a week without a nap once he starts preschool will make a difference.  At least he'll be distracted there and hopefully can get through the day.  I've tried taking him into our bed when he wakes, but he never goes back to sleep, just rolls about a lot and generally keeps us awake.  Plus my OH is really resistant to us doing that as he thinks it will become a bad habit, if he would actually go back to sleep then I wouldn't mind!

Will try the shorter nap and earlier bedtime.. my poor mum has him (and his brother) today as I'm back to work so will give her some instructions!

[Haribo2012]

The 1-0 nap transition is tricky, I sometimes let DS1 just have 5 mins on the way somewhere if it’s a short journey. Often refreshes him lol!
Good luck to your mum for the day 😊

[Katet]

My DS2 was like that, the only thing that really helped us was him learning to read at 4.5yo & he'd stay in his room reading books. Before that we just couldn't get past the 5am wake up no matter what we tried... even now as a 13yo he doesn't tend to sleep in much, just who he is. One thing we found that got rid of the overtired grumpy was him falling asleep at 4.30pm & sleeping through to 6.30am (only time he slept long - go figure) one day a week & the rest of the week it was more like 7.30 to 5am no matter what.

[Spamelina]

I've been trying to do as Haribo suggested and keep him to just a 20 minute nap each day.. and putting him to bed early, so he's asleep by 6.30pm and I think it is making a difference.  The last 3 nights he's slept until nearly 6 and then stayed in his room (albeit rather loudly!) until the 'sun' has come up on his gro clock at 6.15am.  Tried setting it slightly later this morning for 6.25 but think that was a bit to long for him to wait as he was creeping out at 6.10!  But hey.. as I said, we're happy with anything after 6am! 

He's not been too grumpy after his short nap either, apart from yesterday when his dad put him in his bed for the nap (he'll only go for a nap in bed for him!) then woke him up again.  I think maybe it works better when he just has a quick nap on a car journey maybe.  He's been getting quite tired and throwing himself about towards the end of the day, but not overly bad so I think he's getting used to it.  Not sure whether to let him have a longer nap one day, maybe on Tuesday after his first afternoon at preschool on Monday when he won't have any nap all day, will see how he is.  Though I figure he's getting over 11 hours a night now so overall he's still getting more sleep anyway!

Anyway, I'm sure this will all change in about a week again, but so far so good!

[Haribo2012]

Glad to hear it’s going well for now, things always change like you say.
You could do a longer nap and later bedtime once a week and see how it goes, it’s often trial an error.
With mine if he’s not had a nap in say 5 days and he has a 30 min one it doesn’t often affect bedtime but with my eldest when he was this age any nap made nighttime and bedtime a nightmare x

[Spamelina]

So it seems that as I predicted, our success was short-lived!  We're creeping back to wake-ups between 5-5.30 and messing about at bedtime again  . We've been sticking to the short naps and early bedtime but I'm wondering whether to just go cold turkey on naps altogether?!  We tried one day of letting him sleep longer as I thought perhaps he'd need it after preschool but that just seemed to make it worse.. so I can't think of what else to do.  Given he won't go to bed to nap for anyone other than daddy, my mum and I have to engineer a car journey to get him to nap anyway so it would just be easier all round if we skipped it!  I know he's going to be totally bouncing off the walls by the afternoon but don't know what else to do!  Any ideas?  Gosh, I'll be glad once we're passed this 1-0 nap transistion stage 

[Haribo2012]

I’d just try pushing through with no nap, keep to a 12 hour day, but of course if he’s up at 5am a 5pm bedtime isn’t realistic, maybe a couple of days with super early bedtime so he gets a solid 12 hour night then push it out x