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I would ignore him until 6 We did that with my daughter. She didn't get up as early but any early wake up for her we just ignore and she goes back to sleep. Now she sleeps till 8ish every day.

My son, who’s a little younger, has been doing this too! A lot of times it’s bc he has to poop but not always. When I let him cry he does not stop then everyone’s awake for the morning. I’ve got no solutions yet, just came to commiserate that the lack of sleep hurts!

I’d consider the timing convenient: Daylight Savings is just around the corner. DD1 recently started waking up around 5:30 (so nowhere near as bad as 4:30), and I’m just not going to adjust her to daylight savings. I’m not a fan of Daylight Savings aside from the fact that it has helped us with some bedtime/wake time issues in the past. With that, waiting to go in until 6am to get him will only be a 30 minute vs 1.5 hours.

A later bedtime means less alone time for you in the evening, but at least with my girls once it’s staying lighter later there’s no getting them to bed. I haven’t adjusted my kids for Daylight Savings in 2 years and it’s worked well because in the winter I only have to worry about keeping them entertained inside for like an hour after dinner, and in the warmer months we get to stay outside much later.

My son is 20mo and does the same thing. I just put him to bed early and ignore him until 5 (he is also a bloody murder screamer). Also will not adjust him for daylight savings

ETA my older was also like this and around 2 we did not adjust for daylight savings so she was sleeping like 8-6 and eventually we moved bedtime a little earlier and she started sleeping past 6. She outgrew it

We hit a terrible sleep regression a couple months after my son’s second birthday (early wakings and sometimes as early as 3 am without going back to bed) and what worked for us was getting a stoplight clock from amazon (red light until it turns green and is ok to wake up). The trick to getting it to work was setting it to an attainable time (like 4:30 and celebrating his success (praise, sticker, etc) and when he seems to have gotten it, adjust every few days by 15 minutes until you’re at a time that works for you.

@bloved: no advice, just commiseration. My LO has been sleeping terribly the last couple of weeks. We've been sick a lot so I've attributed it to that, but I also wonder if we're in a sleep regression at the same time. I know there is one around 2, so I'm hoping we're just getting that out of the way. I guess we'll see!

We have been going through something similar with my 15 month old (he's been waking at 5am or earlier for months now, sometimes as early as 3:45am). Mine also has been able to go to sleep on his own easily at a normal bedtime the whole time. I consulted a sleep therapist and she gave me some interesting advice which was that she believed his circadian rhythm was set to the wrong time. She told us to try pushing his bedtime as late as possible (for us, this was 8:30pm) for a few days until he started sleeping later. Then slowly move his bedtime back to normal after he had been sleeping later for a few days. If he started to wake up earlier again, we could do cry it out until we were ready for him to get up.

At the same time, I needed to wean our guy from nursing at night because what happened with us was that I had always nursed when he'd wake anytime past 3:30am or so, and I think he started just waking for the day. So I slowly weaned him and started pushing his first morning feed to be later and later (we aim for 5:30am now at the earliest).

It took a couple weeks but between those two strategies, our little man has finally been sleeping a little later this week. He made it to 5:20am 2 days ago, 5:45 yesterday, and 6am today.

I mean, I wouldn’t treat it as reg start of the day under any circumstances. He could lay awake in bed but that’s about it. No lights, no talking, no books, no toys. #6amorbust

@bloved: O dropped her nap at the same time. I think they were semi-related. I actually think in her case, dropping the nap made her early wake ups worse. It was like she just got into a cycle of not sleeping enough and then could never sleep enough. We now have her sleeping an hour in the car every day, and she's sleeping better at night too. She's definitely on the lower sleep needs end of that spectrum, but at the same time, sleep begets sleep and when she is overtired she doesn't seem to be able to make up for it in the morning.