The behaviour management approach can also be used to solve sleeping problems caused when your baby sleeps at the wrong time of day.
Late bedtimes and late wakings are common among children and adolescents. They can also occur as part of other sleep problems in younger children. It is tempting to allow a child who has a late bedtime to sleep late in the morning, so that you can have some time to yourself. But if you would like your evening without your child, then you will have to adjust the time he gets up. Very few children sleep for 14 hours at a stretch.
The easiest way to do this is to wake your child a little earlier every morning so that his night is cut short and he is ready for bed at an increasingly early time. Begin by allowing him two more days of late bedtimes but without any attempt to bring them earlier. Make a record of when he wakes. The morning after the third night, wake him 15–30 minutes earlier than he woke the previous mornings. Do this for the next three days as well, bringing the waking time earlier by 15–30 minutes each day without changing the bedtime.
Once your child is having 45 or 60 minutes less sleep than usual each night, start to make bedtime 15–30 minutes earlier each night. At the same time continue to wake your child progressively earlier until he is getting up at a convenient time. Once you reach the preferred waking time, stick to it every day, even at weekends, for the next few months until the pattern is firmly established. The same goes for bedtime.
During this programme your child will be mildly sleep deprived. Try not to let him nap during the day any more than normal or he won’t be ready for bed by the right time.
Some settling problems arise when a baby has a late afternoon nap, and is just not sleepy. If your baby still needs his sleep, move the nap progressively earlier in the day, say by ten minutes each day. You could also try to shorten his nap by ten minutes each week. If he is more than one year old he may be fine on just one nap a day. Try dropping the afternoon nap and re-scheduling the morning nap to straddle lunchtime by moving it on by ten minutes every two or three days.
Sometimes difficulties arise when a child gives up his daytime nap, usually between two and three years old. For a few months the lack of a nap can mean that your child becomes overtired by the evening and is therefore overactive and stressed. Being overtired can also cause more waking at night. If so, don’t wait until he is sleepy before beginning your bedtime routine, he may be too tired to cope with it and may resist sleep when he’s put into his cot. Try starting half an hour earlier than you usually do.
Another solution is to let your child keep his daytime sleep but encourage him to sleep earlier than before and wake him after he has had half the usual time. You may find that he doesn’t want to sleep at the time that would suit you; if so, encourage him to rest, lying down on his bed, perhaps looking at books.
This is one of the most intractable sleep problems.
‘For early wakening, nothing works. We tried blackouts, later bedtimes and no naps in the day, but nothing works.’
Diana
Many children just seem to rise with the sun no matter what you do or how late they go to bed. But there are various approaches that may help.
Your child could be waking because he knows that something good happens when he does. Such a thirst for life might actually be engaging if 5am didn’t come quite so early in the morning. Perhaps you always slot a video in when you come down and you feel too tired to play. Even a feed or a cuddle as soon as he wakes could be rewarding.
If your baby is still in a cot, try delaying any reward until a little later each morning, gradually increasing the time that he must wait, say, five minutes longer the first morning and then ten minutes after three days. However, if your baby wakes you by crying every morning, you may have to take a different tack first. Crying gets the day off to a bad start. So, go in before he cries, smile and show him that you’re happy he’s awake. Once you’ve done this for a week he should be sure that you’ll come before he’s desperate so you can begin to delay going to him for those few minutes.
Continue to increase the delay until you reach half an hour. You may find that after about ten days he is sleeping longer in the morning, and then you can start the delaying process again. But don’t try it too many times – some children are just happy and awake in the morning. If you are putting your one-year-old to sleep at 6pm you shouldn’t be surprised if he is awake by 6am the following morning.
Once your child can now climb out of his cot you’ll need to go to him quickly in the morning or move him into a bed. Alternatively, something external could be waking him. Central heating timers, early morning commuters, milk deliveries or sunshine could all have an effect. You could try switching the heating on later, moving your child to another room or installing secondary glazing, buying your milk at the supermarket or black-out blinds.
‘Cara had a lot of sleep problems, and she’s still not a brilliant sleeper. I think some people just aren’t. She used to cry in the night, and wake early. We didn’t do anything very clever about the early waking. We tried black-out blinds, but they didn’t work. It was her body clock that was waking her up, not the light outside. She used to be up at about 5am or 5.30am, but I refused to get up until 6.30am. She’d just lie in her cot, and presumably she’d had enough sleep by then, so she was happy enough. We refused to have her in our bed, because we knew that we wouldn’t sleep, and anyway we thought that at some point she has to sort this out for herself. We didn’t try putting her to bed later – she always went at about 7pm. But we expected her to sleep 12 hours, but she never did. We didn’t worry about it, because she wasn’t our first, so we knew we weren’t doing anything wrong. Now, at seven years old, she still gets up early, but entertains herself.’
Hilary and Mike
You can also use the behavioural approach at the end of the day to address this problem. Try putting your child to bed progressively later each night by about 15 minutes so that after a few days he is waking later. But do not let him nap more than usual during the day.
Some children have what sleep counsellor Mary Kasper calls a ‘detached nap’ – an early morning sleep, only two or three hours after an early waking. These sleeps may be handy for parents, because while the baby naps they can get the older children off to playgroup or school or organize themselves for the day. But if the early morning waking is a problem, the solution lies in joining that early morning nap back to the night-time sleep.
You can do this by gradually delaying the nap by a few minutes each day so that it stops being a top-up for the night and becomes ‘fully detached’. Your child should spontaneously start to sleep longer in the mornings. Watch out for him being ready for bed earlier than usual and ensure that you stick to a bedtime that is convenient.
Many early risers grow out of the condition when they begin playgroup or school, and if they don’t then by this age they are able to entertain themselves more easily for a short time without waking you. A drink and a biscuit placed with a few interesting toys next to your toddler’s bed, ready for the morning, may give you a couple more minutes’ grace.
If none of this works, you may have to resign yourself to an early start to your day. Go to bed earlier yourself and make the most of the mornings. There’s something virtuous about rising before anyone else, which can make you feel pleasantly superior for hours at a time.
Toddlers and older children respond quite well to being told that they can get up/come into parent’s bed when they hear the alarm clock. Start by setting the alarm for the approximate time that your child wakes then gradually set it 5–10 minutes later each day until an acceptable time is reached. This can be combined with a star chart (page 126).