The Results of the Early Riser Question

(More thoughts on the mom who won't have a ladies' weekend with her friends right below this post.)

This is in response to the original early riser post.

So, not surprisingly, it looks like how your kid sleeps and reacts to bedtimes and other sleeping conditions are a function of his or her personality.

Well, duh. I could have told myself that, I guess.

But it does look like there are two Best Practices that seem to work for a majority of kids:

1. Early bedtime. Kids do really each seem to have that sweet spot. For every one of wix's nightowl kids, it seems there are a few of Bethany's 6-pm-bedtime kids. It wouldn't hurt anything to try jiggling your kid's bedtime a little earlier to see what happens.

On a personal note, my younger one seems to have hit the 55-week developmental spurt (thank you Wonder Weeks) and slept for 11.5 hours straight last night. My older one went to bed 30 minutes earlier than usual last night and slept until 7. We'll see what happens tonight.

2. Darken the windows. It seems like most people experienced some morning benefits of darkening the windows. But that doesn't necessarily mean spending big bucks on blackout shades, because it turns out that you can use cardboard or plain old aluminum foil (which will also protect your children from alien invasion, natch), and HollyRhea reports that you can buy blackout shade fabric at the fabric store and cut it to fit your window. How ya like us now, overpriced blackout window shade makers?

On the other hand, there didn't seem to be any real consensus on naps. Some people felt good naps helped their children's nighttime sleep (the sleep-begets-sleep kids), while others observed that their kids slept better when they dropped the nap or took it earlier in the day (the go-til-you-drop kids). So it seems like trial and error is what we're left with.

Any other insights? In some ways it makes me feel a little better to know that there isn't some magic secret that I've just been unaware of this whole time.

Comments

[Liz]

Hi Moxie! Found this site via Summer and am having fun looking through it. Haven't read all the comments about this issue yet, but I plan to.

I write a very humble Mummy blog here in Sydney, mainly read by friends and family. But a post that I wrote when my youngest was about 19-20 mths old about the issue of 'dawn waking' (ie starting the day between 5-5.45am) is frequently found by people googling this very issue. I have received many nice emails in response! It can be found at:
http://selfindulgentramblings.typepad.com/self_indulgent_ramblings/2004/08/to_my_dawnwakin.html

The most relevant bit is the second half. In short, NOTHING really worked in terms of solving this issue when my son was this age, and the experts I consulted gave me the impression that I would probably just have to find a way to survive somehow until he grew out of it. The good news is that he DID grow out of it, all of his own accord. Can't remember quite how old he was, though. It is all a blessedly distant memory now that he is nearly 3 and a half!!! Unfortunately I still have the caffeine addiction to show for it.

Hang in there!

[Moxie]

Thanks for the literature review, Liz. That was helpful to read what the experts were advising.

IME the real issue for parents is that this seems to be a recurring problem. I feel like for my older one it's cycled around every 16-18 months. So at 3 1/2 I thought it was a distant memory for us, but then here it came again to bite us in the ass at 4+. At least it only lasted a month or so this round, if we're actually out of it.

[ValleyGal]

The only thing that keeps me sane has been realizing that my kid sleeps a relatively fixed number of hours in a 24 hour period. So, on days when the naps are longer, the night sleep will be shorter and vice versa. I just try to adjust my bedtime to allow me "enough" sleep given the expected wakeup time (10 to 12 hours after bedtime). It doesn't stop the early waking problem, but it does help the overtired cranky mommy problem.

[Menita]

We've given up on trying to change Polly's (57 weeks) bedtime for now. What we do is go to bed when she does (on a lucky day 11 pm, on not so lucky days 12.30 pm) and sleeping at the same time. We're VERY lucky in that, aside from an I-don't-know-what-the-deal-was-with-waking-up-from-4-to-5-for-four-days-running last week she sleeps for anywhere between 8 to 10 hours straight.
We will try again in a couple of weeks.
Have a lot of deadlines to get through and don't want to push things right now...

[Kinneret]

No insight here. We just go with the flow - bedtime seems to be a non-concrete thing here (anywhere from 8 to 10pm)and considering my son won't stay asleep for longer than two hours unless he's sleeping with me ... *shrug*

We try the 2-3-4 or whatever it is nap thing, but really? I try and work off his cues. Although I read them wrong frequently :)

Now if only I could get him to take solids ...

[Linda]

What about those of us who don't WANT our kids to have an early bedtime? My husband gets home from work at 6:30. If we put the kids to bed then, he'd never get to see them. We do an 8 or 8:30 bedtime so that we have some family time.

[Moxie]

That's another good question, Linda. I couldn't do a 6:30 bedtime either because my husband wouldn't have enough time with the kids.

[ValleyGal]

Linda (and Moxie), we have the same problem, but what we do is on nights when bedtime is 6:30, we just have family time at the crack of dawn the next morning. Us grownups go to bed ridiculously early (like at 9pm) and then Daddy gets up with the early riser for great playtime, while Mommy sleeps "late" (you know, until 7). I sometimes get a bit jealous, because the early playtime is often the best playtime of the day (happy well rested baby), but not so jealous that I get out of bed! My kid is a difficult sleeper, so we've chosen not to fight his body, but to just adjust ours... It's not for everyone, but it works really well for us!

[liz]

Ooh! I wanted to add that we made our room darkening drapes out of a doubled-up dark green queen-sized flannel sheet.

[wix]

The drapes in CX's room/playroom (since we co-sleep at night) are a good-sized remnant of black panne velvet that I had in my sewing box. It doesn't make the room completely dark, but it's definitely dark enough that it mimics dusk. I'd guess that any darker, medium-to-heavy-weight fabric would make a decent dusk-out curtain.