At our house we wake up at 5:47AM. This is actually an improvement from 4AM! It’s exhausting but like I said it’s an improvement. My kids are genetically programmed to wake up super early. They did not get this gene from me. I love to sleep! I need a good 9 hours over a few days to feel refreshed. This gene comes from my husband who considers sleeping in sleeping until 7AM. So not only do my kids wake up early but they both eliminated their naps at 2 years old. Sleep has been one of the biggest challenges for me but I have found something that helps!  Teach me time clock has been a life saver. What is the Teach me time clock? First it is a clock with a kid and parent friendly design. It shows the both analog and digital time on the  LCD display. When you press the left foot button it shows the time in just analog, press the right and it speaks the time and displays it in digital. I love how it speaks the time. My 5 yr old can tell the hour in analog but has hasn’t yet mastered the minutes. This is helping him with that and there are actually games he can play on the clock that can help improve his time telling skills.  It has more functions and features but what I like best is that it changes color when it’s time for bed and when it’s time to wake up.  At night around 6:30PM the white clock will light up yellow, and in the morning it will change to green.   I can’t explain how this has helped me with JR my 3yr old.

At around 2 JR started to wake up at 4-4:30AM and we would try to tell him to go back to bed. We even put a gate in front of his door but he would kick it down or stand and scream until he woke everyone up.   After a couple months of pulling my hair out I started looking for something that would help me get the point across that we STAY IN BED ( or at least our room) until at 5:30AM.  I found this clock on amazon and thought I’d give it a try. They run about $35-$40 on amazon and I bought one for each of my boys. My oldest of course caught on right away and loved that he could play games with it and it would tell him the time.  It took a little practice for before JR caught on. Each night before bed we would talk  about the yellow light means slow and sleep , and green means GO GO GO!  Honestly it didn’t happen right away. It took a about a month. After a week he understood the concept but would try to get around it by changing the light green by hand. Then we would have conversations about how if he changes the color it doesn’t count.  He now has the concept down and we are slowly making the green light time later and later in the morning. My goal is 6:30Am.  He is now actually sleeping later on his own and when he does wake up early I hear him playing in his room. NO more kicking the gate down or screaming. When it’s time he stands at his gate and calls out, “mom the Light is Green”. There are some products that change color but don’t show the time. I  liked this one because it did both. It works for my 3 yr old who focuses on the color and my 5 year old who want to know the time. It works for me because I can function the whole day if I get up at 5:30AM not at 4AM!

*I was not paid for this post and all of the opinions are my own.