Early Risers

It is of course typical this morning ….I woke up at just after six ….couldn’t get back to sleep…and have come down to make a cup of tea and start getting on with things.

Its now 6.32am and no one else is up…..TYPICAL.

Usually my youngest is up by 6 and there isn’t a lot we can do about it. Like me, he can do early mornings. But perhaps he listened yesterday when I said I didn’t want to see him before 7am.

Putting him to bed later makes very little difference he still wakes at the same time and then is just tired and tends to be much harder work in the day with every little set back becoming a major issue.

At the weekends we take turns to get up with him.

We try and encourage quiet playing or looking at books in his room ..sometimes that works.

If he gets into our bed he wriggles and asks continually when can we go downstairs.

If we send him back to bed the chances are we will have just nodded back off before he comes in again.

Still there are some advantages

Friends do tease me about it especially when I get to school and have already made a Shepherds Pie or washed the kitchen floor, hung the washing out and have walked the dog. The trouble is by about 9pm I have had it and am no good for anything.

The other two are also fairly early risers. Everyone is normally up at 7am so in the mornings there are some chores like emptying the dishwasher or taking the recycling out. There is no TV on school mornings so they play, help or sometimes do some homework, read or practice spellings etc.

It did work really well when the kids were babies. My husband is a night owl by choice and would do a late feed while I slept and then I could do the night and early morning feeds.

Sometimes we just have to accept that our children are early risers. In fact, with my eldest, I have to accept he doesn’t need as much as sleep as me and we are beginning to reach the stage when sometimes as I go up to bed he is awake. The light is off or I turn it off as I go past but it won’t be long now until he’s up after me. Sometimes I miss those evenings when all was quiet by 7pm!

Do you have any early risers in your family? Do you wish they would stay in bed that little bit longer? Why not try our free reward charts with an incentive to work towards.