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 Ask Dr. Jana
Afraid Toddler is an Early Riser | | | QUESTION | | | Dear Dr. Jana,
I have a 2-1/2-year-old daughter who has a sleep problem. Since about 10 months of age, she wakes very early--between 5-5:30 AM. For periods of time, she has even awoken as early as 4:30 AM!! You can imagine how difficult this has been on us for such a long period of time. She IS tired. I definitely feel it is NOT just a matter of her being an "early riser." If she seemed fine, I would just deal with it! Her room is completely dark and there are no noises waking her at that hour. She currently goes to sleep at around 6:45-7 PM. It used to be 8:30 PM, but I received some advice online that sometimes children who wake early are overtired, so I adjusted her bedtime accordingly about six months ago. She naps daily for about one and a half hours. I would love any insight you can give me!— Jennifer in Long Island | | | ANSWER |
June 15, 2001 | | | Dear Jennifer,
I can imagine that you are very tired--keeping the hours that your daughter sets for you! While it is possible for a toddler to simply be an early riser, or to not need as much sleep as other toddlers her age, there are several things you should take into consideration before coming to this conclusion.
One of the important factors you mentioned is that you know your daughter is still tired when she wakes up after getting around ten hours of sleep at night. While some two-year-olds really do only sleep that long, it's much more common for them to sleep eleven hours or more at night along with taking a one and a half hour nap each day.
Given your situation, I would first consider what time your daughter takes her nap. If it is sometime in the morning, it would suggest to me that your daughter actually woke up before going through her last sleep cycle. Typically, children reach a point of brief waking at around 5:00 a.m., but quickly fall back asleep until 6:30 a.m. or so. If children have not learned to fall asleep on their own at bedtime, they are often unable to do so at this early morning waking either. Therefore, I would suggest that you make sure your daughter learns how to fall asleep on her own when going to bed (if she doesn't already) and that you treat this early morning rising as a "middle of the night" waking--waiting longer to respond and explaining to your daughter that it is still night time and she needs to lay back down.
It also is important to make sure that noise and light aren't responsible for early morning waking--but you have already taken care of this. And while it is true that putting an overly tired child to bed earlier can sometimes help, it doesn't sound like it has made much of a difference in your daughter's case either. In fact, in your case it may actually be contributing to the problem and you may want to try a later bedtime along with the other recommendations listed above.
That said, before you latch on to the possibility that your daughter just doesn't need that much sleep, first look at when she takes her nap and try to get her to go back to sleep in the morning. Only if nothing seems to help, and she takes her nap in the afternoon, would I assume that she may need less sleep than the typical toddler.
For a very good description of this common sleep problem, along with a more detailed description of how to handle it, I would suggest looking in the book, Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems by Richard Ferber, M.D.
Good luck to you!— by Laura Jana, M.D., F.A.A.P. |
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