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Are your kids waking too early? Do you wish your children would sleep in just a little later? I understand completely! When your kids are waking too early in the morning, it can make them tired, and cranky and they don’t feel their best. Overall, tired kids are just not very happy kids. (Not much different from tired adults)
When our kids were young, I would put our kids to bed at 7:00. I wanted them to get a full 10-12 hours of sleep (because it helps them to be happier & healthier), but in doing so, our routine has taught them to sleep later naturally.
Update: This post was written several years ago, but it is always one of the most asked questions that I receive, so I wanted to share it again today. Our kids have continued to sleep until 7:00 (or later) thanks to this little trick. It has helped to give our kids the rest that they need (and deserve). ♥
Sleep is Essential for Children
Yes, getting a good night’s sleep is essential, so teaching our kids great wake & sleep patterns will benefit your child greatly. It will help their physical health, emotional health, and mental health.
Even going to sleep at the same time every night has an enormous impact on our kids’ educational, social, mental, and physical health.
Getting enough sleep = healthier child… better ability to stay focused, happier children… there are so many benefits to getting enough sleep. If a child wakes in the middle of the night or too early in the morning, it can cause your child to be tired, foggy, and grumpy in the day.
We have four kids and let me tell you; our kids had started waking up EARLY! Two of our kids were very early risers and I just wanted them to sleep longer so they could have the rest they needed. They were exhausted from the minute that they woke up, yet they were still waking up early.
Once I taught them how to sleep long enough to get the rest that they needed, they felt better.
Waking too early?
Is your child waking too early? You can help them learn how to sleep later.
I knew that I had to do something, many years ago, when our older kids were waking too early – around 5:00 am and 5:30 in the morning.
It was still dark outside, they were waking their siblings, causing our morning routine to begin much sooner, leaving them exhausted in the middle of the day. Naptime often came in the late morning, leaving the kids requiring a two-hour nap every day
Plus, when kids are waking too early it can cause them to be overtired by bedtime. This makes it harder for them to doze off at night. Falling asleep when you are TOO tired is just as bad as trying to fall asleep when you aren’t sleepy at all.
Bottom Line: Kids need to get plenty of sleep.
PS- our family’s normal wake-up time is at 7:00 am. I don’t consider 7:00 to be early, but 5:00 is a little out of my comfort zone. 😉
How Much Sleep Does A Child Need?
As you can see from the chart below…
Do you want a copy of this chart? I’d be happy to mail you a copy to download- just click here to send me your e-mail. Thanks!
How the sleep time charts work:
Sleep charts are simply to be used as a reference. They may not work for your family, but they are often based on experience or studies, so I usually like to try to understand them.
I liked this sleep chart (below) shared by Wilson Elementary School. If the child wakes up at a particular time, they need to go to bed at the time below that time, depending on their age.
So, according to the chart, a five-year-old would need to go to bed by 6:45 if they had to be up at 6:00)
I’d adjust it a bit, to fit your family’s schedule, but it does show that kids need a lot of sleep… and to that point, I agree.
How to help your child begin to change their “body clock”
To help our kids learn good sleep habits, we came up with this idea, and I have shared it with friends and family, and they do it, too.
It works!
We finally figured out a way to keep our kids in bed longer (giving them the chance to get enough sleep for their bodies and minds)
This idea is to naturally set our children’s internal clocks to a time that is more suited to their schedule (with preschool and grade school). It allows their bodies to sleep until it is time to wake up.
Before you begin: Determine a wake-up time for your child & practice it.
Figure out what time your child will go to bed each night and what time you’d like them to wake up. Remember that going to bed at the same time every night is so important for their health and behavior!
After you determine an appropriate wake-up time, you need to practice that number with your kids.
- If you want them to get up at 7:00, show them the number 7.
- Show it to them on a piece of paper.
- Show it to them on their clock so that they will recognize that number.
- Show it to them in books.
- Have them practice writing it.
- Talk to your child about what happens in the morning… “After you are done sleeping through the night and you are ready to wake up, you will look at the clock and see what time it is.” (more details below)
Steps to help your child sleep later:
Materials that you need:
- A digital clock
- A piece of paper (I use index cards. You can use anything!)
- Tape
- Marker or crayon
What to do next: The step-by-step way to teach your kids to sleep later.
- STEP ONE: WRITE JUST THE HOUR of the time you want the kids to come out of bed on your piece of paper.
- Write the number big (a little bigger than the number on the clock).
- Examples: 6:00? Write 6
7:00? Write 7. (This is our ‘allowed out of bed’ time)
8:00? Write 8.
.. - STEP TWO: Tape that paper over the MINUTES on your digital clock, so that all that you are left seeing is the hour and the paper.
Here is what it looks like (sorry that my time was 4:00 when I took it )
- Show your kids when the number on the clock (the hour) matches the number on their paper, they can come out of bed.
- Tip: If your child is going to share a room with another sibling, be sure that both children can see the clock from their beds.
Here is a close-up of our clock:
Why Do I Not Allow Them to Come Out of Bed Earlier?
I do not let our kids get out of bed before 7:00, for safety reasons. I don’t want them in their rooms playing when I do not know about it. I want them in their beds.
(I made this rule after I had read this heart-breaking story, last year, about the little girl that died when her dresser fell on top of her while her parents were asleep in their room- it was one of those VERY HEAVY dresser/changing tables that everyone has. Her mom didn’t realize it until she (the mom) woke up for the day.
Her story has opened my eyes to the fact that dangers lurk where you don’t expect them, even with furniture that you would NEVER expect to fall over… same with toys…. you just never know which ones have hidden dangers, even if you don’t expect it).
For that reason, I don’t want our kids awake without me knowing.
Do Kids Have an Internal Alarm?
I have read multiple studies suggesting that there are reasons that our bodies tend to wake us up, but oftentimes our bodies get out of sync. Science News says: “Just like an alarm clock, the body’s internal clock can be reset.”
I believe this to be true, as well. After we implemented the 7:00 wake time and our children practiced it, they began sleeping later. Now, when I am up in the morning and I check on them before 7:00 am, they are all still sound asleep.
Around 7:00-7:30, they begin to naturally awaken, thanks to resetting their internal alarms.
TIP: I should remind you that I didn’t start this until our kids were almost THREE YEARS OLD and could understand it.
How to Teach Kids to Sleep Later:
- When they come out of their room the first few days early (and they will), just take them back to bed and say “You can come out at 7:00 when the number of the clock matches. Are they the same now? Ok, sweetheart- go back to bed.” (put them back into bed).
. - Now what you will want to do is make sure that when it DOES turn seven, you go in and say “Ok! It’s time to come out now! It’s 7:00!! Great job!” Do this for over a week, until they get it.
. - As with anything, you need to remember that you have to TEACH your kids this new rule. You can not expect them to sleep until 7:00 tomorrow, just because you started this today. Give it a week or two, and you will have them sleeping later.
- When you tuck your kids in at night & lie down with them, talk about the morning and what it will look like. Talk about what number they will see before they get out of bed.
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Tips:
1. Take it slowly. If your child has been getting up at 5, don’t expect him/her to sleep until 7. You have to do this slowly. I would change the clock for this, too, so that at the real 5:30 (first few days) their clock would say 7 (or your goal hour).
I would move it every few days over a few weeks until they were waking up at 7:00. (Just my two cents)
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2. Another completely different idea that a friend on Facebook gave me is to have your lamp set to a timer (like the kind that you get when you are going on vacation) and have it turn on at a specific time (example: 7:00 am). When the light goes on, they can get out of bed.
3. Another idea: you could try an alarm clock like this one that I found on Amazon with my affiliate link: (The light is red when they need to stay in bed and green when they can come out)
Good luck!
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when my kids were little i put a cd player/alarm clock in each of their rooms. i’d use a soothing, quiet cd (usually instrumental, sometimes classical; nothing with lyrics) and turn the volume down really low, setting the alarm for a reasonable time. they knew if they woke up and heard music they could come to mommy and daddy’s room, otherwise it was back to bed. worked well for me.
This is a great tip, but how do your train an 11 month old to wake up later??
Thanks
Oh- That’s so hard. I did this by just giving our babies a drink of warm milk when they woke up early and then put them back to bed. I never really talked to them, just gave out cuddles and their milk, like it was the middle of the night. I wouldn’t let them come out & “play for the day” unless it was after 7. Honestly- if they got their milk, they went right back to bed & a few months later they just skipped that wake up & slept in on their own.
I would love it if that worked, but I can’t even rock her or cuddle her back to sleep. She is awake, awake! Her daddy is an early riser, so it may be in her genes, but it doesn’t help me being exhausted! 🙂
Oh!! haha!
We’ve been doing this, and it’s working really well! My son was having difficulty knowing if it was time to wake up or not because he gets up when it’s still dark out for school. But now that he has a clock and knows that he isn’t supposed to get up until 7, he stays in bed! Sure, he’s in my bed every morning at 7:05… (not sure how he’s so punctual??) but at least he doesn’t come in at all hours anymore.
Please advise, I have been trying some form of this for awhile now. My almost 3 year old stays in bed but he wakes up at ungodly hours (before 5:30!) And is SO LOUD! He talks and sings and screams. I go in constantly and warn him. Take away his “tablet time” but to know avail. It’s the same with nap time and he hasn’t slept during nap time for !months. I want to get to get this taken care of so I can move my one year old out of my room and into his room reclaiming our bedroom. She sleeps like a champ and I don’t want to deprive her of the sleep she needs. So frustrated and tired!
I wonder if you could use his tablet in his room when he is aloud to get up? So say at 6:00 he is allowed on his tablet? I only mention that because when our kids play on the Kindle, they are SO quiet! You could just set the volume and lock that part (if thats an option) ?
I have a 10 year old son, 2 1/2 year old daughter, and a 14 month old daughter. When we just had the older two, my son and daughter shared a room for a few months. During that time she would wake up when I came in to wake him up for school. (she was about a year old at the time) Ever since then she will wake up between 6 and 7 o’clock. Now, my son has his own room (moved into another house) and my girls share a room. My youngest would much rather sleep until 8 o’clock or later but wakes up to “noise” (anytime my elder daughter sees her move she says her name and the younger wakes up. If I make any sound in their room during naptime she is awake) We know that the younger does better when she gets to sleep in because she does so when the elder girl stays at grandma and grandpas overnight. How can I get the older girl to stay quiet so the younger can sleep longer? We have books in her room (she sometimes falls asleep in the chair beside her bed “reading”) and quiet toys that she sometimes plays with. We have a lamp in her room but that its because she is afraid of the dark (originally because I needed to see where I was walking for midnight feedings).
That is really hard. What we do, when we are on vacation and the kids have to share a room, is we give our kids our phones or an iPod and a headset that does not have a cord (connects via bluetooth) and when they wake up, they are allowed to use the phone/headset until the other kids wake up. Another option is to have her come into your room when she gets up and watch a show in your room or snuggle in your bed. I hate to say that electronics are the answer, but honestly, they keep the kids so quiet that I was always willing to do that for 30-45 minutes until the other kids woke up.
My kids are on the same 7-7 schedule. They’ve had that bedtime and wake up time for 7 years now, so it’s not a new concept. Do you have any suggestions for proper punishments/consequences for waking up earlier than 7? My oldest 2 kids are 8 and 6 and I have a DAILY struggle with the 8 yr old waking up early (6-6:30ish), getting up, waking his little brother up, them getting ready for school, and in the process they wake up their younger brother who is 4. The 4 year old, who definitely needs the sleep he’s missing out on, then proceeds to be very noisy, sometimes waking up their 2 yr old sister. I’ve tried EVERYTHING I can think of, but we are on our 101st day of school and I’ve only had to go tell them “time to get up now” about 3-4 times. The other 96 days have been mornings full of lectures, warnings, punishments, yelling at times, frustration and an overall horrible start to my day. Every day. I obviously don’t know how to correct this issue and could use any suggestions anyone has! We have the clock that changes colors at 7 which he completely ignores. And he knows how to tell time, without putting a 7 on his clock. His previous punishments have been loss of video games, writing sentences, time outs, etc. When being scolded now, he just stares at me with a blank face and shows absolutely no emotion, like he’s become used to this lecturing as part of his daily routine. “I get up early, we get ready, mom gets angry, she lectures me, I go to school…” Please help!!!
I tell them that for every minute before 7 that they get up that is how much earlier they have to go to bed that night. It works here. 🙂 They hate going to bed at 6:45 when everyone else is staying up until 7:00. I only had to do it once or twice before they got the picture. Ps- our kids are the same age! 8, 6, 4, 2. (the older 3 are boys & the little one is a girl) 🙂
Hi! I’m new to your blog and have loved all that i’ve read so far! Major question for you… We moved our daughter to a big girl bed 3 months shy of turning 3. We gave her a sun/moon light that we could program for when bedtime/morning time is. She lived and died by it- never got out of bed, even in the AM when the sun came out she would just call for me – I was amazed! (Bedtime was 7:30, wake time 7:30). THEN she turned 3…everything changed. At night she realized should was CAPABLE of getting out of bed, same with the morning. And all of a sudden her internal clock changed to waking up at 6am every morning. Occasionally 6:30 but normally it’s 6am or 5:55 if we want to get technical :). This is an hour and half sooner than what she was doing every day since she was 3 months old. Am I missing something? Any ideas why this has just changed all of a sudden? Right now, I tell her to get back in bed, walk her back in there, give her books to read until her sun comes out. But she never falls back asleep like I want her to– if she does its only 10 minutes. She naps 45 min. on the dot every day too (it used to be 1hr 20 min) but again, after turing 3 all of these sleep changes happened…. I’ve thought about cutting the nap, (and she’s been on a couple nap strikes) but I truly feel like she needs that sleep (she is EXTREMELY active). Her bedtime is 7:30. I am totally planning on trying this clock method though. Any other thoughts? HELP! I’m so desperate! I’ve even considered paying to talk to one of those sleep consultants! Any advice would be appreciated!! 🙂 -Liz
We had to cut out our daughter’s nap at 2 1/2 because she was playing in her bed until like 10:00 pm!! Now I put her in her room around 12 or 1 and give her books. She reads in her bed and plays with her baby dolls for around an hour or two. She doesn’t cry or anything, I just go in and get her when I think she is rested. (She turns 3 in August). If you put her back to bed in the morning with out books and just told her that it was still night-night time, would she go back to sleep? All of our kids have TRIED this at one point or another, but I just don’t let them get out or play or anything until 7 and then at 7 I go in and show them the clock (or in your case the alarm clock) and make a big deal about “Oh! Good morning!! Its time to play!” Before then, all they get is sleepy mommy saying “Its night-night time. Go to bed. I love you.” And if they come out again- I don’t talk at all, I just put them back to bed. 🙂
What do you do if you tuck them back in and tell them not to come out before 7, but then you can hear them playing??? Not staying in bed….do you keep putting them back in bed??
I don’t mind if they are playing IN Their bed with their stuffed animals or whatever is in their bed, but as soon as I hear them get OUT of bed, I go in and put them back into bed. I also leave a few books within arms reach (on a nightstand right beside the bed)
Ps- honestly, our kids now just sleep until 7:00 – its like it changed their internal alarm clocks. 😉
Good ideas, ! Thanks 🙂
I did something very similar with my now 11 yo when he was little, he had a clock in his room and I taught him that both hands had to be past the 6 before he could leave the room (after 6.30) especially the short hand. My other lb is almost 3 but everyone is up before 7 anyway and he generally wakes around 6.30. I definitely will try this if I need to, though!
🙂 Yes- go for it!
One thing I have not seen anyone say is, my daughter has to go to the bathroom sometimes earlier than 7, I can’t really make her stay in bed 🙁 Also, regarding the dressers, we bolted ours to the wall, most come with the hardware for this , just an fyi! I have a friend who this happened to as well. It’s horrible.
Our son gets up to use the bathroom every day at 6:00 am, but goes back to bed until 7:00.
Great tips! We plan on getting a clock when we transition. Our LO is still in her crib bc she loves sleeping in her Zipadee-zip sack. We plan on keeping her in it until she lets us know otherwise. Sleeping great so not going to change a thing!
Smart!!
This is great in theory, but it hasn’t worked for us! We have a clock that turns green when they can come out. It worked great for our first son for about a year. Our second son, almost 3, will scream, kick the door, yell etc… So badly it wakes our other son up. So what do you do when your child turns into the exorcist just trying to put him back in his room? I think it depends on the child. I am by no means a pushover parent, in fact I am VERY strict. He won’t get out of his bed at bedtime because for two weeks I kept putting him back in his bed everytime he got out. He was actually calm and only fussed a little for this training. The morning training is awful! I’m tired, it wakes my other son up, and I’m just used to waking up at 5:30/6am now. He sleeps from 7:30pm until 5:30/6amand takes a two hour nap. He is never cranky in the morning. In fact, he’s a very cheerful and pleasant one. So he is getting enough rest between night and daytime sleep. (And yes, I’ve tried the no naps but that doesn’t work, he is way too young to stop them. He’s too cranky come 5 if he doesn’t have one and doesn’t sleep any longer at night).
Oh my goodness- I bet you are tired! Would he lay with you if he comes in at 6:00? He is so young that he won’t understand certain things. What if you gave him a leappad or table or something in your room (with cordless headphones) when he woke up? Then he will be in your room, or even in your bed, but not waking anyone else up and you can still sleep. ?
I love this idea and will try it tomorrow! My question is my daughter was sleeping great until we took her soother away two weeks ago. She is almost 3 and still has a 1-2 hr nap each day. She goes to bed at 8 and was waking at 7:30-8. Since taking the soother away, she still naps great but bedtime is a struggle. She lays awake until about 9 and is up anytime between 6-7. I’m not sure if it would help to drop the nap or not? She still seems so tired by naptime and often asks for it before we even put her down for one. Any suggestions would be great! I’m 9 months pregnant and would be sad to lose the nap now;)
hope that it works! 🙂 It took us a few days to get the hang of it.
my 2.5yo barely naps during the day except if my mum is looking after her because she hops in and naps with her. I try and get her to have quiet time instead and cross my fingers that she falls asleep. I put her down for nap at 1pm and she might sleep for an hour when she does. I put her to bed by 7.30pm and if she hasn’t napped she will go off quickly. If she has napped then it could take an hour for her to go to sleep. she wakes up usually at 6.30am even though we have a Sam sleep trainer clock set for a 7am wake. Every night I remind her not to wake up till Sam does but it’s not working. Any advice please?
I think that at 2.5 it is hard to teach them to stay in bed until 7. (ps- our 2.5 year old gave up naps, too) 🙂 Have you ever tried giving her a drink of milk at the 6:30 time, then taking it away (to avoid aspirating) and saying “ok- it is still time for night-night” and putting her back to sleep? I”m sure you have – just a thought.