Dana Obleman: Hi! I’m Dana Obleman, creator of “The Sleep Sense Program” and today’s question comes from Lydia and she’s wondering, “How can I prevent my two year old from getting up at the crack of dawn?”

That is a great question and is one I hear often and I have the number one tip for keeping a toddler in bed to an appropriate hour. I’m going to share with you a little later in the video, but first let’s get a few reasons why the toddler might be waking up too early.

The first thing to look for is the daytime nap. Sometimes, if a child is getting too much daytime sleep, it will lessen the nighttime requirement meaning his three hours of afternoon napping means he’s going to be up at 5:00 o’clock in the morning.

Have a look at that, see if maybe it’s time to eliminate the daytime nap or at least, minimize it. I find that most toddlers around two and half to three years of age often start to show signs of not really needing as much or any daytime sleep, so have a look at that.

The next thing to look for is brightness. Even the slightest change in lighting will stimulate to wake up really in all of us, but as an adult we can look at the clock and say it’s 5:00, I am going back to sleep, a toddler can’t do that.

You really need to make sure the room is nice and dark and I mean dark. If you have to take the curtains close to the wall, go ahead and do that. It doesn’t have to be pretty, but it has to be dark and if all of those things are fine, you don’t see any problems there, then I’m going to give my number one tip for keeping a toddler in bed and that is a clock.

A toddler isn’t going to really understand the concept of time, you don’t have to worry about that. All you have to do is get yourself a digital clock, duct tape over the minutes, so all your toddler can see, see hour and start talking about magic seven. Magic seven means it’s night time and magic seven means it’s morning time.

Tell your toddler that he cannot get out of his bed until he sees that magic seven. I am telling you it works like a charm. You have to make sure it’s a rule. If you let him get up before the clock says magic seven, then, you’re right that’s never going to work.

You have to continue to return him to his bed, refer to the clock, explain it’s not magic seven yet and you have to reinforce that. Within a week or two, your toddler will begin to understand that he has got to wait for the seven before he can get up.

Few things you can do to speed this up a little is to put the number seven in a big piece of paper beside the bed, talk about it through the day, show him the number seven repeatedly throughout the day, so then, he begins to understand the difference between a five and a seven and again, he’s not going to understand numbers, you don’t need to worry about that.

He can absolutely decipher the difference between five, six and seven. It doesn’t matter, if you think, he wouldn’t be able to understand this, he will, I promise. I would say, it works great for a child of two years and up. I started it with all my children around that age and I am telling you it really works as a charm.

Thanks so much. Sleep well.

Transcription by CastingWords