– Hi, I’m Dana, creator of the Sleep Sense Program and today I wanna share with you my number one strategy for keeping a toddler in their bed if they’ve started to do some early morning visiting.

It’s very common when a toddler can now get out of their own bed to start coming to find you a little bit too early in the morning. And my number one strategy for that is a clock.

So there’s so many new cool gadgets on the market. You can get what is called an okay to wake clock in all kinds of variety of shapes and sizes. And if you wanna go that road, absolutely. My only suggestion would be that it not emit any light in the night. It should stay completely dark throughout the night so that we’re not interfering with a toddler’s melatonin levels. Then usually the light comes on when it’s okay for the toddler to now get out of bed.

You can even kick it old school and just get yourself a digital alarm clock, which is what I did with all three of my children, and just duct tape over the minute number so all your toddler can see is the hour. And then just start talking about magic seven. Magic seven is when we go nighty-night and magic seven is when it’s okay to get up. And it’s gonna’, I mean, they’re not gonna’ really understand the concept of time, per se, but they can absolutely start to recognize what a seven looks like and start waiting for that magic number to appear.

Now what you have to keep in mind though is this needs to be the rule. You cannot let this little person get up before the clock says it’s okay. So if you have a little visitor before the clock indicates it’s appropriate you’re just gonna’ have to keep returning them to their bed. Show them that the clock says it’s not okay yet and make them wait until it does.

It’s gonna’ take a few weeks, absolutely. And as long as it stays the rule, it will work. And you’ll have a toddler who’s now waiting until he sees that magic seven before he comes to get you.

Thanks for watching, sleep well.