The lark vs. the early riser.
Do you have a lark (early bird) or an early riser on your hands? Perhaps you are totally unsure of whether or not your child is a true early riser or maybe just waking out of habit? Sometimes it can be really confusing to know, but I am going to teach you how to tell the difference.
Before we get into all of that, I wanted to mention an interesting fact about true early birds. Research has shown that a true early bird usually has one or both parents who are natural early risers as well. Yes, it’s possible for a child to have parents who are not early-rising, but usually you’ll find that one or both parents indeed are.
Believe it or not, in general babies have a natural tendency to wake on the earlier side. You’ll find that they often gravitate toward an earlier bedtime and an earlier wake time. Obviously like anything else, there’s a range and some babies can wake up much later. On average, though, babies actually wake up between 6-7:30 a.m. (sometimes earlier). But let’s figure out what kind of child you have.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself to figure out if your child has a true early body clock or if they are waking prematurely out of habit:
Are they generally happy or grumpy upon waking?
Are they able to make it happily to their next nap or are they crashing and burning way before their usual nap time?
Are they crying upon waking or are they playing happily and or calm and chilling in their cribs?
Are they waking early no matter what you do and no matter how much you’ve tried to change their schedule?
So how do I deal with early-rising?
Figure out where your child falls on the early-morning scale based on how you’ve answered the questions above and then you will know how to proceed in dealing with this persistent issue. Either way, whether your child is a natural early bird or not, you want to make sure you are not taking them out too early (like before 6:00 a.m.) because you will shift the day too early, further perpetuating an early-rising issue and you are also going to end up with very early naps and a too early bedtime.
For the early riser:
Figure out why he is waking, is it out of habit, hunger, sleep crutch, a scheduling issue, etc…and deal with it accordingly. If he is truly waking hungry, then focus on full feedings and proper meals throughout the day. If he is waking and needs help getting back to sleep, consider teaching your child independent sleep skills so he can easily transition from one sleep cycle to the next without your help. Yes, this helps eliminate early morning waking and a heck of a lot of tears. Read my post about how to deal with early rising to help you figure out how to best deal with it. For him, you can aim for a wake time of 6:00 a.m. and maybe even push him closer to 7:00 if you can, especially if you see he is really tired when he wakes and doesn’t seem rested. We want to help him get over this early morning issue and get used to going back to sleep or rat least resting quietly in the crib.
For the early bird:
If you’ve tried everything in your power to shift her schedule to eliminate the early morning waking issue and there is no change, then this is her true body clock. Maybe her schedule will change in the future, as it often does fluctuates, but for now we have to deal with it as is.
You really need to adjust her wake time to a more realistic one because if she has had 11-12 hours of sleep then she is likely ready to start the day early. It would be unfair to expect her to stay in bed until the time WE want her to because she is physically unable to sleep till that time. Say she goes to sleep at 7:00 p.m. and wakes for the day at 5:15 a.m. Obviously I would not advise that you take her out at 5:15, but I also wouldn’t advise leaving her in till 7:00 a.m. if you see she is consistently unable to sleep until that time or if you see that she is getting increasingly upset when left in the crib until 7:00 a.m. and still unable to fall back asleep. It would be acceptable to take her out at 6:00 or even 6:30, as that’s about 11-11.5 hours after she’s gone to sleep and that’s a sufficient amount of sleep for her (for most babies, actually).
Adjust your expectations
Many babies and kids are actually unable to sleep in and this is where we need to adjust our expectations to accept an earlier wake time for certain children, especially if you’ve done everything to change their schedule. Any time after 6 am is considered a normal wake time and they can start their day and for a natural early bird, who probably also has an earlier bedtime as well, we can’t expect them to stay in bed longer than 6 or 630 (for example). We don’t want to make them wait a very unrealistic amount of time before coming out of bed or we are setting them up for frustration and a lot of unnecessary tears.
So adjust your expectations, learn what’s realistic sleep for your child, get to know their body clock, see when they are naturally ready for bed and when they tend to wake up in the morning and this will tell you a lot about their unique sleep personality. Often during sleep training when dealing with families, one of the the number one struggles is dealing with early morning waking - or earlier than what parents are used to, and I always tell them to give it time to see if this is just a matter of their baby getting used to a new routine and schedule or if they genuinely have an earlier body clock. Sleep training brings out a child’s true body clock because they are learning to sleep long stretches without intervention, which can cause them to wake for the day earlier than they used to. They are also learning to do very long stretches of sleep without any feedings (for the most part) and they are naturally going to wake hungry earlier because of that. It’s one of those side effects, if you will, of sleep training and this is totally normal - sometimes it’s short lived and sometimes it’s not.
