How to Help Your Kid Sleep Later: 5 Tips to End Early Rising for Good
Getting woken up before dawn, day in and day out, is E X H A U S T I N G. It’s a recipe for the type of exhaustion that you feel in your bones, and in your stomach, and in your eye balls. It goes beyond sleepy or tired. It seeps into every pore of your tapped-out parent existence. Who relates?
This was me with my first born. He thought 5:00 AM was party time and woke up wide-eyed and guns blazing. It damn near broke me. But I got really, like really really really, serious about solving the problem, and cracked the early-rising code. Yeah, he’s still an early bird at heart. This is his chronotype and there’s no changing that. But his internal clock is programmed to an acceptable time that doesn’t break me. And he’s 11 now too, inching toward adolescence, and those hormones are shifting his schedule even later.
So, tired parents: even if you do nothing about your obscenely early rising lark now, rest assured that puberty will at least take care of it for you. I digress…now let’s get back to problem-solving. Let’s get that early riser of yours to sleep longer!
What do Sleep Coaches consider early rising?
If you’re still reading, its probably because your baby, toddler, or kiddo is up at the crack of dawn, or before, and it’s happening more often than you’d like. It’s one of the top issues we get and one of the biggest parenting woes of early childhood. “Can I puh-leeze just sleep until 7:00 AM? Just once?” I talk to exhausted parents about early rising every week.
If you want your child to sleep later and sleep longer, keep on reading. Fortunately, there’s a simple formula for resolving early rising and we’re about to spill the beans.
Look familiar? It’s 5:00AM and those little eyes are wide open and ready to start the day … and you’re ready to crawl back in bed.
But how early is too early?
First, we need to define early rising so we can be clear on who this blog can help. The definition of early rising is going to vary from one home to the next, but I think it’s helpful to set a standard definition. Sure we’d all love our kids to sleep until 8:00 AM and there was a time in life when 8:00 AM was considered crazy early for lots of us—oh, the college years! But when you have a baby or child, at least in Western countries (yes, there is geographical variability in internal clocks), 6:00-7:30 AM tends to be the norm. And if you have a morning lark, which is a biologically driven determinant of when your kiddo wakes up, it’s going to be more like 5:45-6:00 or may 6:15 if you’re lucky.
If your goal is to get your morning lark to sleep until 7:30 or 8:00 AM – that’s probably unrealistic. Or if your kid wakes up at 7:00 AM and you want them to sleep until 8:00 AM. But I know there are a lot of 4:30-ers out there and we can help. What we’re suggesting here is that if your baby or child is up before 6:00 AM, we can help them sleep later. Here’s how.
7:00 AM doesn’t need to be a pipe dream.
5 Tips to Help Your Baby/Kid Sleep Later and Sleep Longer
Follow these steps to make it to a more acceptable wake up time (and yes, 6:00AM is appropriate for the little larks out there — that’s simply the latest a lot of babies and toddlers can do).
This is your formula for getting your kid to sleep later - so please don’t skimp.
Follow all the recommendations if you’re really serious about getting your baby, toddler, or child to sleep later in the morning.
Keep the morning wake up time consistent every day of the week
This is a tough one because when your kid is up in the night, isn’t it tempting, or even appropriate to let them sleep in and catch up on zzzs? Or if you want them to sleep later every day, shouldn’t you let them sleep in when they happen to be snoozing late one glorious morning? Well, if you want them to regularly sleep later, the answer is no, not really.
Here’s the thing, having a wake up time that’s within a consistent, 30-minute window, every day of the week, will drive a consistent internal clock. And when the internal clock is humming along consistently, their little body is going to begin to know when it should be asleep, and when it should be awake.
As hard as this recommendation is (and sorry for making a hard one first), it can make all the difference in the world. Keep that morning wake up time consistent, every day of the week. And yes, even weekends. Sorry!
Keeping the wake up time consistent and reasonable for their little internal clock will improve sleep quality and consolidate sleep.
Keep the Night Time Vibe Going to Sleep Longer
Keeping the bedroom dark and boring until 6:00 AM, or as close as you can, ensures that your kiddo’s circadian rhythm is doing what we want it to do. Early light exposure tricks the brain into thinking that it should start the day at that time. So the internal alarm clock starts going off at whatever time you programmed it. Turning on the lights or throwing an iPad at your toddler or little kid to keep the quiet only perpetuates the problem.
Side note: no judgment here – we all do what we’ve gotta do to survive and when you have a 9:00 AM presentation and your kid wants to start the day at 4:00 AM and you need another couple of hours of sleep to perform your best (or to at least make sense), the iPad may just have to be our favorite babysitter that morning. Start keeping the lights off and screens off starting the next day. And then aim to be 100% consistent with keeping the Night Time vibe until 6:00 AM.
Hold the Snacks Until it’s Time to Start the Day
That cheese stick or squeezie you (understandably) toss at your child to keep them quiet and that extra bottle or nursing session you offer in high hopes that they’re just hungry and will go back to sleep … is likely, sadly, perpetuating the early waking. These calories send the message to your child’s circadian rhythm that it should wake up in the wee hours for food.
If you want your kid to sleep later, hold off on feeding them until 6:00 AM or as close as you can.
Caveat: this excludes babies who still need feedings during the night. But FYI, if your baby had a feeding at 3:00 AM, it’s highly unlikely they need one at 5:00 AM, unless you have a newborn.
Don’t Nap Them too Early
If your child naps, make sure that you aren’t putting them down too early. Yeah, your 6 month old may start rubbing their eyes signs at 7:00 AM if they woke up at 5:00AM, but try to make it as close to their appropriate nap time as possible (which will likely be 8:00 AM since most 6 month olds need about two hours awake before their first nap). And if you have a toddler who’s on one nap, try to avoid cars and strollers in the morning if they're likely to doze off before nap time rolls around. When this happens, it signals to the internal clock that everything should be pulled earlier in the schedule. Once you resolve the early rising, you can go back to strolling to the park in the morning without having to worry about them falling asleep and whacking out their schedule.
To figure out the earliest your child should be napping, count forward from 6:00 AM (I say 6:00 because this is likely the realistic wake up time you’re striving for if your kiddo is up before dawn) the awake window that is age-appropriate, so 2 hours for a 6 month old, 2.75 hours for a 9 month old, 3 hours for a 12 month old, 5 hours for a 18 month old and so on. You can learn more awake times and check out sample schedules by age in our Sleep Needs by Age Chart. And here’s schedule info for 2-5.
You’re welcome to aim for a later first nap time if you’re bold and trying to get your kid to sleep until 7:00 AM, rather than 6:00. But remember, they are most likely programmed for a wake up between 6:00 - 7:00 AM at this age. A 7:00 or 8:00 AM wake up may be unrealistic given the internal clock programming of little kids and babies.
Guidelines for earliest first nap times by age:
💫8:00 AM for a 6-month old on three naps
💫9:00 AM for a 12-month old on two naps
💫11:00 AM for a 2 year old on one one nap
💫12:00 PM for a 3 year old on one one nap
If your kiddo is so tired you sense that they’re going to lose their %&$#, then just try to make it within 30 minutes of the desired nap time. This will keep their schedule from getting pulled too early, while also avoiding major overtiredness.
Make Sure Your Child isn’t Overtired at Bedtime
Keep those awake windows in mind and let bedtime be flexible — a crummy nap day will need an earlier bedtime than a solid nap day. It’s counterintuitive, but later bedtimes often lead or earlier rising.
When a child (or any human for that matter) gets overtired, stay-awake hormones like adrenaline and cortisol start pumping through the system, making it much harder to settle. These hormones are supposed to take a break at night so we can sleep and rest, so when they’re present in your little ones system, sleep is going to be lower in quality leading a harder time settling, more wake ups, and/or early rising.
As tempting as it is to keep your baby, toddler, or kid awake longer to get them to sleep later, you’ll likely get the opposite effect. Again, you can zero in on the best bedtime (and nap times) for your unique child by downloading our Sleep Needs by Age Chart for babies. And here’s sleep needs and schedule info for 2-5. Or you can read all you need to know on our blog. Caveat: if your preschooler still naps, they may actually need a later bedtime to sleep soundly through the night – this has to do with a sleep process called homeostatic pressure. But follow the guidance from our sleep charts or read our blog on little kid schedules and you’ll get the timing right for their sleep.
Hang in there, dear and tired parents! Schedule adaptations can take a couple of weeks. Stay consistent, follow these 5 tips, and let us know how it goes in the comments below.
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EARLY RISING FAQ
What if my Baby or Kid Wakes Up Crying?
The only thing worse than starting the day at 4:30 AM is starting the day at 4:30 AM with a kid who’s screaming bloody murder. If your baby or child is upset, it’s absolutely fine to go to them for comfort. But you’ve got to keep your nervous system calm because they will pick up on your emotional state by way of mirror neurons in their brain. You could lay on their floor and practice deep breathing or some yoga poses, repeat an encouraging mantra or prayer to yourself, or just think happy thoughts and try to fall back asleep (I’ve fallen asleep on my kiddos’ floors many many times. No shame here!). If this is hard for you (as it is for most of us parents…), check out our Mindful Method for SleepTM free or the Heart Focused Breathing technique to help you find your Zen at bedtime and in the middle of the night.
Just remember that we need to maintain the nighttime vibe from tip #1. So if you go in to soothe or comfort your child, first, keep your calm. But second, keep it dark, boring, and offer occasional soothing or reassurance that it’s time to sleep. You may find yourself having to wait it out on their floor for a few days, but by being quiet, still, and calm, you’ll model for them the behavior they need to emulate to eventually start falling back asleep. So no games, minimal talking and interaction, maybe a little ignoring if they're trying to engage, lights off, no snacks, and model falling back to sleep behavior. It's a long few mornings but it works!
What if I’m in the Middle of Sleep Training and my Baby is Waking Up too Early?
If you are in the midst of teaching sleep independence, you’ll need to treat this wake up in the 4:00 - 6:00 AM time frame like any other night waking. Remember – it’s not daytime yet!!!
And since their sleep pressure has worn off a good bit by this point, it may take them a loooooong time to fall back asleep. In fact, they may not fall back to sleep at all the first few days to a week they try in this time frame. But hang in there! They will catch on so long as you give them the space and time to learn.