3 Yo Waking up Between 5-6Am Consistently

Hey Deborah,
Yeah, sorry to say but it sounds like its time to drop the nap. I feel ya- my son stopped napping at 2- it was such a bummer! But soon after he was sleeping from 8pm straight through until 6:30. I hope that helps.
blessings,
J.

Does your child have allergies? Morning cough, sneezing or itchy eyes? My Dr. told me that histamine levels drop early morning (more like 4 or 5) and can cause early waking in a kid with allergies. If you think that may be contributing to your problem, I would do a trial of over the counter claritin or zyrtec at bedtime to see if it makes any difference. My Dr. said you would notice a difference within 2 days if that was the problem. It worked for us but our son still rarely sleeps past 6:15.

Hi Deborah,

That is tough. But I know exactly what you are going through. When my daughter turned 3 (she is 5 now) and in a toddler bed, she woke up EVERY NIGHT around the same time, which was usually 3am and again an hour later. What I think was the problem was the transition from crib to bed. I didn't deal with it too well since it was exhausting so we would just have her join us in our bed...not a good idea haha since she would then try it out every night.

Was she a good sleeper before she turned 3? My daughter was an super sleeper as a newborn till we transitioned her to a toddler bed. Then the games began! (-;

The good news is, they do grow out of this nonsense. I also think that napping can mess them up.

How about walking her back to her room and lying with her for a few mins. Tell her you will be back in a few mins to check on her, by that time (hopefully) she has drifted back to sleep. That helps when my daughter wakes up now once in a while.

Hope this helps?

I would continue to put her to be at the same time, especially if she is going to wake early no matter what. Does she have items in her room to keep her occupied when she wakes up. Books she can look at. Maybe tell her that if the sun is not up yet, she should not be up yet either. You could also just let her come in your room and climb into bed with you and fall back asleep, if she will.

I would suggest shortening her naps to 1 hour, and possibly eliminating one of the naps, if she is taking more than one a day.

Here are some other ideas that I hope might be helpful for you...

http://www.askdrsears.com/html/7/T071100.asp#T071130

http://www.askdrsears.com/html/7/T070100.asp

Best wishes,
J.

I just answered another question similar to this one :)

I have a 3 year old (4 in Jan) who would wake up soooo early. It didn't matter if he went to bed at 1 in the morning he would still wake up at 6:30. It was horrible!! We tried alot of tricks to help this but it seems like age and patience is the key to success with toddlers. The older they get the better they understand to NOT wake mommy and daddy up so early. We had a toddler bed at first for our son. I layed down with him to get him to sleep and the bed was so uncomfortable I let him sleep with us. We got him a regular full size bed and that has made a huge difference! I'm super short so it wasn't uncomfortable because of my size....it was hard as a rock! I hope this helps!

Send her back to bed. We have a rule that don't wake Mommy and Daddy until 7 p.m. Daughter just turned 4 and she would start that habit of getting up early. If she gets up before 7 we send her back to her room where she can play with her toys or look at a book in her bed.

I hate to say it, but some little ones are just natural early risers!! My son was not- but my nieces and nephew who just visited ( ages 2, 4 and almost 6) were all up at the crack of dawn EVERY morning, no matter how big a day we had the day before or what time they went to bed. It's a drag- but maybe you can teach yourself to get up earlier and use that time to do some yoga or laundry,etc. At least if your child keeps this habit when she's older, you will have no trouble getting her up for school! :)

Hi Deborah
I thankfully do not have issues with sleeping, however my daughter does get up early 5:30 -6:00 every morning and has since she was 6 months old, however she gets plenty of sleep she has always gone to bed at 6:30 and to this day at 5 still takes a 2 hour nap in the afternoon. the main thing is to get them on a schedule, many people think if you put them to bed later they will wake up later that's not the case their body pretty much has a natural wake up time and yours may also be early i think if you tried an earlier bedtime for a week or so you would be pleasantly surprised at the stretch of time she sleeps.
probably to much info sorry
good luck
V.

Just when you find this is completely annoying you will experience her changing and you won't be able to get her out of bed. Then you'll be awake when they go out when they are older and have cars and ohmygosh, I know you don't get any sleep, but this is going to change. I promise. In the meantime perhaps cancel the naps (although that's hard to do as they seem to have their heads sleeping on the table during dinner time then). There is one thing I used to do and it sort of worked is to set your clock and go wake them up before they wake up. Just a couple of times and their little bodies must think you will do it everyday and they keep sleeping. I don't promise anything however, but that worked for me.

My son would do this also. You didn't mention how long this was going on, but I found that my son would do it for about a week or so and then go back to his usual wake up time. I would let him crawl into bed with me if he wanted to and sometimes he would go back to sleep for another hour.

I also found that sometimes my son would wake up because he had peed or (once trained) had to go to the bathroom.