Hi, I’m Dana Obleman. Welcome to this week’s video chat. I asked, yesterday, on my Facebook page for some suggestions from all of you viewers on some parenting issues that you might be struggling with at the moment and would like to hear a little bit of advice or suggestions for. I got a really great response. Thank you, everyone who wrote in.

I just went through and pulled out the ones that kept coming up in the more popular of the problems at the moment. I hope today that this might be a problem you’re struggling with and you find a bit of relief here.

One thing that came up a lot in fact, I just had a call yesterday from someone with this exact problem was a toddler who won’t stay in her bed in the morning. A toddler who used to sleep until 7:00 AM is now all of a sudden beside your bed or out of her bed at 5:00 in the morning.

I think, when you’re a toddler, as soon as you wake up, you’re full of energy. If you’ve had enough sleep through the night, you’re ready to go, go, go. Children can convince themselves that all of a sudden, a 5:00 AM wake up is an appropriate time to start the day.

We know as adults that 5:00 AM is just far too early. How do you encourage your toddler to stay in bed and sleep longer?

One of my favorite suggestions is a digital clock. You purchase yourself a little alarm clock style digital, duct tape over the minute numbers so your toddler can’t see that and all she can see is the hour.

Then you start talking about the number seven, magic seven. Magic seven means it’s bedtime, Magic seven means it’s morning time. Your child, obviously, won’t totally get the whole concept of time, but they can easily recognize numbers.

I would start this with a child even as young as 22 months. They’re very capable of learning new things, and if you practice through the day “This is a seven. What does a seven look like? This is magic seven.” then very quickly they will soon start to recognize the number and know that that means something special and important.

You tuck your little one in at night. You say, “Morning does not start until the clock says seven. You may not come out of your bedroom, and you may not get out of your bed until that clock says magic seven.”

Now, in order for a rule to be a rule, it needs to be the rule, so you’ve really got to reinforce this. You can’t budge on it. If you budge, she’s not going to care either.

When she shows up at your bed at 5: 00 AM, you march her right back to her bedroom, you show her on the clock that it is not seven yet, and you tuck her back in. If you have to do that 5, 10, 20 times, it doesn’t matter. You’ve got to do it until that clock says seven, and then you can make a big celebration about it. “Yay! The clock is seven. We can now start our day. Let’s go have breakfast,” or whatever it is you do to start your morning. It is a great, great prop, because a child will recognize a seven, learn that it’s the rule, and start staying. My children are 10, 7, and 6. They still wait until their clock says seven, and they know that they can then get up and start the day. It’s a great way to regulate a morning wake up time.

Another thing to think about, though, too. If you’re having an early riser, make sure that the room is dark enough. Even if you think, yes it is, there’s barely any light coming through, the slightest change in environmental light can signal the body to wake up. I want you to make sure that it’s so dark that if the sun starts to rise early, there is no change to the conditions of her bedroom. It really does need to be dark.

You’ll find for yourself that you will sleep better if your room is also very dark, so this is something to consider.

One other little tip is to evaluate environmental noise. Is there anything happening at 5:00 AM on your street or in your house that could be stimulating a wake up? It could be that the garbage truck goes by at that hour or somebody in the house is getting up to go start their day for work.

You want to minimize any kind of change because sleep is really, really light at this hour. The slightest thing could potentially wake her, and then it’s much more tricky to get back to sleep at that time of the morning.

So, rule it out. You maybe need to get yourself a little white noise machine or run a fan in her room just to give a little bit of a sound buffer to that. OK?
Those three tips, especially the clock. You’ve got to trust me on this clock thing. It’s really going to solve your problem.

Yes, it might mean for a week or two you’re returning her to her bed repeatedly until she finally understands that you mean business about this, but a couple weeks of hard work to get a toddler to stay in bed until a more appropriate time is definitely worth it.

Thanks for writing in, and thanks for watching today. Sleep well.