For parents of babies or toddlers, few milestones are more welcome than when their child starts sleeping through the night. But there’s often another aspect still complicating parents’ ability to get a good night’s sleep: early morning wakings — including in the pre-dawn hours — by young children ready to greet the day.
Even though this propensity to wake early is developmentally normal, it can be painfully out of sync with adults’ desired wake times. Fortunately, there are some strategies that can help.
Sleep guidelines for young kids
By toddlerhood, a child’s total needed hours of sleep will decrease a bit from their earliest months, but they still require a significant amount of sleep: Up until age three, toddlers should get 11 to 14 hours of sleep a day, including naps. For preschoolers (ages 3 to 5), total sleep needs decrease again to 10 to 13 hours of sleep a day, including naps.
These broad ranges reflect the reality that sleep needs can vary. If your child naturally falls on the lower end of the range and is still napping during the day, their total nighttime sleep duration may seem short — perhaps less than you’d prefer — but can still be developmentally appropriate.
Bedtimes and wake times
Although bedtimes will vary based on the child’s age, whether they’re still napping during the day and other individual variables, a 2- to 3-year-old will generally have a bedtime of about 7 or 7:30 p.m. and will clock about 11 hours at night and three hours during the day, notes Shelby Harris, a licensed clinical psychologist, and board-certified behavioral sleep medicine specialist.
By the time the child enters preschool, they’ve likely dropped their afternoon nap but may still be sleeping about 11 hours at night. For this age group, a reasonable bedtime is 8 p.m. or 8:30 p.m. “at the latest,” says Harris.
However, this may not make for parent-friendly wake times. A toddler who goes to bed at 7 p.m. and sleeps for 11 hours will wake the next morning bright and early at 6 a.m. While wake times will vary, for a child who goes to bed on the earlier side, “6 a.m., 7 a.m., even 5:45 a.m. is within normal limits,” Harris notes.
A note about naps
While it may be tempting to curtail afternoon naps, particularly if your child regularly wakes at the crack of dawn, dropping that nap can backfire. “I always caution people not to get rid of the nap prematurely,” Harris says. “An overtired child usually looks hyperactive, so it can be harder to get them to bed, and then their sleep actually ends up being more broken.”
In fact, for young children, naps are still an essential part of their overall sleep. This daytime amount, which is built into the recommendations for how much sleep they need, reflects the reality that their sleep pressure builds more quickly than it does in older kids and adults. Sleep pressure, also known as the sleep homeostatic drive, simply means that the longer we’re awake, the sleepier we become. For young children, this sleep pressure buildup is relieved by daytime naps.
As young children are gradually able to stay awake for longer periods, their need for naps decreases from two naps a day down to one and then gradually goes away. By about age 2, most toddlers will be down to just one nap a day, having dropped their morning nap. The remaining afternoon nap typically becomes longer than it had been before falling off the daily schedule as the child matures.
By around age 3 to 4, most kids generally drop the nap, Harris says. However, it isn’t realistic to expect kids who’ve dropped their nap to suddenly sleep later in the morning. Instead, parents should move the child’s bedtime earlier to compensate for that missed sleep time, to help forestall having an overtired and cranky child in the evening, and also ensure the child is still getting the amount of sleep they need.
How to handle early wake-ups
Despite knowing that it’s normal for young children to wake at early hours, parents may still (understandably) struggle to be roused before the sun is up.
The good news: While you may not be able to get your child to sleep later in the morning, you can help them learn to play quietly on their own and not wake you until a slightly more reasonable hour.
For young children who can’t yet tell time, an “Ok-to-Wake” clock provides light-based cues for when they can get up. A simple way to do so is to set the clock so the light turns green at the appointed hour. “It’s easy to say, ‘Green means go,’ with a young child,” Harris points out.
While there are several commercially available options, you can also create an inexpensive version by purchasing a green light bulb to swap out in an existing table lamp and hooking it up to a smart plug or timer (which is what Harris did when her kids were little).
Make incremental changes
Regardless of which device you use, start by setting it to turn on fairly close to your child’s usual wake time. For kids just learning to play on their own, aiming for just five minutes of quiet time is often a realistic initial goal, Harris notes. Then, as kids get better at waiting, you can push the wake time later. “You’re building up their ability to do things themselves while also slowly building up the amount of time until the light goes off,” she explains.
Both praise and small rewards such as stickers can be very effective as positive reinforcement, she adds.
During the timeframe between when your child wakes and when the light cues them that it’s OK to get up, the goal is for them to play quietly and not wake others. This might mean staying in bed and playing with stuffed animals, or it could be “reading” books or playing with quiet toys in their room — something entertaining but not exciting enough to entice them to wake up early. That likely precludes screen-based activities, which have been shown to cut into total sleep time for toddlers.
Daytime strategies
What your child does during their waking hours can also make a difference in their overall sleep, including their wake times. Harris advises parents to focus on the basics, including maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, having a regular bedtime routine, and ensuring they’re getting plenty of light and exercise during the day. “It’s the basic stuff that we don’t always think about,” Harris says, “but these are the things that work.”
Other potential causes of early wakings
What if your child is waking early but really isn’t ready to greet the day? While young children are generally hard-wired to wake up early, there can also be other factors at play.
Evaluate your child’s sleep space
Take a look around your child’s bedroom and ask yourself: Is their bedroom conducive to sleep? Ideally, it should be quiet, cool, and relatively dark. If your child is being roused by early morning light that’s streaming in, consider room-darkening measures such as blinds or blackout curtains. If there’s household or neighborhood noise, a white-noise machine can work wonders. And if the room is too warm and stuffy (or too cold), adjust the thermostat accordingly.
Look for other causes
In addition to eliminating environmental culprits, consider whether there are any internal issues rousing your child. Physical symptoms such as hunger, thirst, teething, illness, or even constipation can throw off sleep, Harris notes. “And then there are big things, like learning to read,” she says. “They wake and are so excited...‘I gotta go read!’ There are just so many developmental changes happening in the brain.”
If the early wakings continue to persist, keep an eye out for other symptoms, such as snoring or mouth-breathing. If you notice these, it may be time to seek outside help. Although it’s more common in adults, kids can also have sleep apnea, Harris notes.
Another potential cause of too early wakings: nightmares, especially if they occur close enough to the child’s regular wake time that they simply don’t end up going back to sleep.
In this scenario, image rehearsal therapy can be very effective for a child who is preschool age or older, Harris says. “I’ve done this with 4- or 5-year-olds, where I have them draw out a changed ending to the dream so that it’s not scary.” Drawing it out helps them visualize a new dream, she explains, which can help them feel like they have control over the nightmare. “It’s changing the narrative,” she explains.
As Harris sums up, “You want to work on improving their sleep and making sure there’s nothing else going on.”
Meanwhile, in the interim, you may want to reinstitute a nap or simply build in afternoon quiet time.
How to maintain sleep schedules for kids during travel
Even the best sleepers can be derailed by travel, given the myriad changes to routines, environment, and even time zones. Try to be as consistent as possible, Harris says, but “know that travel throws everything off.” She suggests packing a white noise machine to help with nighttime sleep, as well as whatever version of an “Ok-to-Wake” light you usually use.
Even so, it may take a bit of time for your child’s sleep to readjust once you’re back home. Assuming significant time zone changes aren’t part of the equation, you should be back on track in about three to five days, Harris says.
Will my child ever sleep in?
As with so many aspects of raising kids, this phase of early waking is a temporary one and will continue to morph as your child grows.
For young children, going through the process of dropping daytime naps helps lengthen total sleep time at night, affecting both bedtimes and wake times. That said, when it comes to wake times, “the reality is that there are ranges for kids,” Harris says. “Even a 6 a.m. wake time for some grade-school kids isn’t out of the norm, provided they’re getting enough sleep at night.” Then, as kids progress through elementary school, they start to shift to later wake times, she notes.
There’s also a dramatic change waiting in the wings: As your child enters adolescence, their sleep-wake schedule will shift so that they stay up until late at night and aren’t ready to wake until much later in the morning (which is a reason many schools are shifting to later hours for adolescents).
In fact, as unlikely as it may seem right now, in about a decade, when you’re attempting to rouse your teen at noon, you might even miss these early morning wakings.
