Sometimes your child wakes up way to early and then decides they have to go wake up mommy and daddy. While you can’t expect to return to your glory days of sleeping until 10 AM on Sunday morning but you can do a few things to extend your child’s time in bed to a more sane hour.
1. Give your child a wake number. Once your child is old enough to understand numbers you can begin teaching them to wake up at a certain time. Get a digital clock (the larger the better) and tape over the last two digits. Now tell your child they can’t get out of bed until they see the number 7 (or whatever number you want to wake up). Remember you have to keep it reasonable, if your child is awake at 5 AM it is unrealistic that they are going to stay in bed until 8 AM, at least at the beginning. Aiming for 6 AM is a much better starting point.
2. Setup a timer light. My neighbor Gunther set this up and it seems to be working very well for him. This setup has a dual benefit of signaling when a child can wake up and go to sleep. You start with a simple light timer, like one you might use for Christmas lights. Then get a fun strip of lights.
Then setup the timer to turn the lights on when you want your child to get out of bed and to turn off when you want your child to go to sleep. Simple and fun!
3. Go HiTech with a computer alarm. If you have a spare Machine around set it up to be an alarm clock. Use a program like Alarm Clock 2 (OS X) or Alarm (Windows). These programs let you set the Machine to wake to a MP3 file. You can set it to your child’s favorite song or for a personal touch record your own voice telling your child to get out of bed.
Do you have any tips to get your child to stay in bed? Post them in the comments below.
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