Written by Editorial Team
Sleep is extremely important. Children who sleep well, end up being healthier. When they are healthier, they can focus more when they are awake. When they are healthier and more focused, they are happier. And, to complete the cycle, happy kids sleep better at night! Babies waking up early is a problem for many mothers.
As a baby grows, he ends up napping less during the day and sleeping more at night, which is why night sleep assumes a lot of importance. And that is why it is imperative that our kids learn good sleeping habits.
In This Article
A child who has disruptive sleep will also be cranky and pushy and will pass his days in agony. Sometimes the reason your child is not getting enough sleep can be ascertained easily and require a bit of tweaking in the routine. Some common reasons can be:
As a parent, you need to figure out why your child is not sleeping properly. Most babies can sleep for 9 hours a night by the time they are 6 months of age. And no, this is not a miracle, though all babies are different, most babies can give you a good night’s sleep when they hit their half-birthday. Close attention, some help, and a little bit of love should be enough to help a child who is not sleeping well.
Now, if your child is not sleeping well and waking up early, that is a vicious cycle too. They remain tired, cranky, and drowsy during the day. They take longer daytime naps and as a consequence, they sleep late at night. And ironically, that leads to early waking up again.
Thankfully, this problem can be solved with some effort. Before we spill out the tips to ensure your child does not wake up early, let us first see the reasons behind early waking.
Following are a few reasons a child wakes up early
You would have got the basic idea by now – if your child is exhausted or over-tired when he goes to sleep, he will not get quality sleep and he will wake up early. So that is the thing to be avoided! Here are eight tips to ensure your child sleeps better and does not wake up early:
If your child wakes up at 5:00 am every day (or earlier), and you let him be up, then it will only reinforce 5:00 am as the routine wake-up time. Instead, do what you would if your child had woken up in the night, that is, try to resettle him back to sleep with some pats, kisses, and reassurances.
As we mentioned above, going to bed too late or even too early can result in low-quality sleep. 7-8 pm is a very good time to put your child to sleep, so that they get 12 hours of sleep, and wake up fresh by 7-8 am. Do not allow yourself the liberty of changing your child’s bedtime at your convenience.
Most parents leave a light on so that kids do not get scared when they wake up. Ironically, this will lead to early waking and kids becoming alert the moment they open their eyes. Try to encourage your child to sleep in a dark room with thick curtains. At the max, you could leave a small, dim lamp on – just enough light so if the child wakes up in the middle, he can be comforted and drifts back to sleep.
Another reason for early waking which we did not mention earlier is hunger. This is especially true for smaller kids who might have had an early night feed. If you think this is the case, try to squeeze in an 11 pm “discrete” feed while ensuring the baby does not wake up or become alert during the feed.
Slowly train your child to settle themselves if they wake up before time. The first step to this is laying them to sleep when they are still drowsy, not asleep. This way, when they wake up suddenly, they recognize the mattress, quilt, bedsheet etc., and tend to go back to sleep without any help.
Any kind of breathing disorder, including the common cold, can make it hard for your child to breathe leading them to be restless in their sleep and hence wake up early. Even other events, like teething, growth sprouts, growing pains, and any change in life (even as small as a change of bed!) can lead to early waking. Find the root cause and address it.
As we said before, no napping does not equate to better sleeping at night. Quite the opposite, in fact. Ensure your child gets a nap time in the day, as per his age. Do not put off naps thinking that this way the child will sleep better at the night.
As important as having a nap time, is to time it right. Early morning nap times lead to long wakefulness for your child, which in turn leads to troubled sleeping. Make sure the nap time is after lunch so that there are only 4-5 hours of wakefulness between nap time and sleep time.
People often think that if kids go to bed later, they will sleep in later in the morning. However, the most common reason why kids wake up early is that they stayed up too late the night before.
When a newborn becomes overtired, their body produces cortisol, a stress hormone akin to adrenaline or caffeine. Increased cortisol levels indicate that your baby’s sleep will be more disturbed. This results in increased night waking and early morning waking.
Because children’s melatonin levels increase sooner in the evening than teens’ and adults’, the natural time for school-age children to go to sleep is between 7 and 8 p.m. It’s also critical to establish excellent sleep hygiene early on since sleep is necessary for development, immunity, and personality.
With a rich experience in pregnancy and parenting, our team of experts create insightful, well-curated, and easy-to-read content for our to-be-parents and parents at all stages of parenting.Read more.
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