….and comes into our room to wake up my wife and I. Then everyone is cranky and in a bad mood.
keep your bedroom door shut and refuse to respond until it’s time to get up. your child will soon come to understand that you won’t get up and pay any attention until you’re ready to.
as well as this, keep the child up a little later at night or cut out any sleeps during the day for a little while. this will mean that the child is more tired and therefore less likely to wake early.
my mum is naturally a late sleeper and my sisters are both early risers. from when we were about three or four, mum used to leave out a bowl of cereal and a jug of frozen milk at night. by morning, the milk would have thawed but not soured, so we could get our own breakfast from it if we wanted. that meant that not only did we have something to do, we’d already got breakfast out the way by the time mum got up, so that was one part of the morning routine already over with. This will help particularly if your child is waking because he/she is hungry.