Early Waking Sleep Training

This blog is all about early waking and specifically today, we’re talking about how to overcome the early waking. This is all about early waking sleep training, we will delve into the steps you need to take and my three R’s on early rising. Number one, you’ve got to spot where the overtiredness is coming from. If you haven’t already make sure you’ve read my blog on early wakings and spotting the signs of overtiredness, I shared why little ones wake early and we’re talking about 4:00 or 5:00 AM wake ups. We’re not talking about night wakings, about how that happens, why that happens and the things you need to do to find out where the over tiredness is coming from in the first place. The first R is Resolve the overtiredness. What do we need to do? Do we need more nap time? Do we need to work on resettling a premature waking from a nap? That’s when the nap should be maybe an hour and a quarter, but they’re waking up after 30 minutes. Do we need to work on nap resettles or do we need earlier bedtimes or do we need a more consistent bedtime? Is it the wake window we need to shrink down or alter slightly or tweak the timing. We need to resolve the place where we can see that our little one’s falling short of sleep and overcome that overtiredness. We know that’s not as simple as it sounds. We don’t just flick a switch and suddenly, we fixed it. They’re not overtired anymore, but if we can spot it and we know where it’s coming from, then we can apply a strategy to resolving it and helping to replenish their sleep and build up a more fulfilled sleep tank. That’s going to be the key element to resolving this early waking. We do have two other things that we need to do simultaneously whilst we’re over there working on replenishing that sleep tank. Second R for you is to respond to the early waking consistently. What do I mean by that? If they wake up 5:00 and sometimes you are like, “Shh, back to sleep, back to sleep.” And sometimes you go, “Oh, whatever, I’m awake, let’s start the day,” or sometimes they get milk or sometimes they get loads of attention and other times you’re like, “No, not happening.” It’s a mixed bag of response or sometimes it’s feed and sometimes it’s a nappy change and sometimes it’s start the day and sometimes it’s not. We need a consistent response and we need a response that says it’s still nighttime. The environment they’re in needs to say it’s still nighttime. You and your body language need to say it’s still nighttime. The whole message needs to come across that it’s not time to get up right now. If you start conveying this just with cues and environmental cues right from baby stage, then when they’re into toddler and preschooler age, this is so much easier because they can then recognize, oh, okay, yeah. This means it’s nighttime. This means it’s daytime. Mummy or daddy, they don’t talk to me when it’s nighttime. Maybe you just whisper. You might give them a little, “Shh, shh, back to sleep.” You might communicate. I’m not saying don’t communicate. You might communicate in a nighttime mode, but it’s very different to how you are with them in the daytime and that’s a brilliant signal and trigger that you can demonstrate right from baby stage. Respond consistently however, that may look. Now, we work out bespoke responses to families when we work with families one on one, because it can very much depend upon the child’s individual personality, age, developmental stage, everything. There’s so many factors that will determine the best response to givI can;t give you all of that detail here but what I can say is that it does need to be consistent. Once you know what it is, be consistent with it every single time so that they know exactly what to expect, and then they can count on you and then they can rely on you, which actually builds trust. The next R I have for you is reward. We all respond to rewards and incentives. That’s how life works. That’s what a job is. You do a job and you get paid. That