Early Morning Waking in Children: Causes and How to Fix It

Early waking
Written By Caroline Goodwin
Young child waking parents early in the morning in bed

Why is my child waking so early?

Early morning waking is one of the most common sleep challenges in children.

If your child is waking at 5am, there’s always a reason behind it. From overtiredness and bedtime timing to light exposure and sleep habits, understanding the cause is the first step to fixing it and helping everyone get a bit more sleep.

In this article, we’ll walk through the most likely causes and what you can do to shift mornings later.

Will putting my child to bed later stop early morning waking?

Or do earlier bedtimes help children sleep later?

This is the first thing I often get asked by parents and in children under 5, I cannot stress enough that the main cause of early waking is overtiredness.

I know it sounds completely backwards. Surely if they’re more tired, they’d sleep longer?

Somehow… no.

Research shows that later bedtimes are linked with shorter night sleep and shifts in circadian timing. Because young children’s body clocks are naturally early, keeping them up later often doesn’t lead to sleeping in and can increase overtiredness, which may contribute to early morning waking.

When a child becomes overtired, stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline rise. This makes sleep lighter and more fragmented in the early morning hours, which is when sleep is naturally at its lightest anyway, so they’re much more likely to wake fully rather than resettle.

It’s basically the sleep equivalent of being so exhausted you feel wired.

So, for children under 5, the very first thing I’d always suggest is a week of earlier bedtimes.

Start with 30 minutes earlier than usual, but don’t be afraid to go up to an hour earlier if needed, especially if early wakes have been going on a while.

Two important things to remember:

·       It can take a few days to kick in

·       Night one rarely shows the magic

Stick with it for at least 5 days before deciding if it’s working.

“But won’t that make the morning even earlier?!”

This is the bit that understandably makes parents nervous. Putting a child to bed at 6pm can feel wildly early, especially if you’ve got older kids or you’re juggling work schedules.

But here’s the reality:

Sleeping 6pm–5am is far better than 7pm–5am. That’s a whole extra hour of sleep a night - 7 extra hours across the week.

That kind of sleep gain has a huge impact on:

Mood
Behaviour
Emotional regulation
Concentration

So even if mornings don’t shift immediately, you’re still winning.

Could my child be undertired?

As children get older (especially 5+), undertiredness can sometimes creep in.

If they’re:

· Napping too late

· Going to bed very early but taking ages to fall asleep

…they may genuinely need a later bedtime.

This is always worth exploring, but I’d usually rule out overtiredness first, because pushing bedtime later too quickly can backfire.

→ Check out Sleep needs by age to see whether your child may just need less sleep now

How do light and noise affect early morning wake ups?

If over or undertiredenss aren’t causing the early wakes, an easy first place to start is to look at your child’s sleep environment.

Light is a powerful signal to the brain that it’s time to wake up. So, if your child’s room starts getting bright at 4:45am in the summer… their body can begin gearing up for the day, even if they’re still tired.

Blackout blinds can make a really big difference here, especially for sensitive sleepers. You don’t need to turn the room into a pitch-black cave, but reducing that early morning light can absolutely help push wake-up time later.

And honestly, you don’t need anything fancy. We’ve used tin foil, bin bags and travel blackout blinds in the past!

It’s not just light that can wake children early, though - noise plays a role too. In the lighter stages of sleep (which happen more in the early morning hours), children are much more easily disturbed by environmental sounds like birds, traffic, siblings waking, or household noise starting downstairs.

Using white noise can help block out these sudden changes in sound and create a more consistent sleep environment through the early hours. Think of it like a sound buffer that smooths out the background noise so their brain is less likely to fully wake.

You don’t need it blaring; just a steady, gentle level that runs all night and into the morning.

When you combine a dark room with consistent white noise, you’re removing two of the biggest environmental triggers for early waking - light and sound - giving your child the best chance of sleeping later.

→ My favourite travel blackout blinds

→ My favourite permanent blackout blinds

→ My favourite white noise machine

Nap changes and early waking

If you’ve got a younger child who is:

· Still napping

· Recently dropped their nap (within the last 6 months)

…early waking often creeps in around this time.

Dropping the last nap is a big adjustment, and even when kids seem to cope initially, overtiredness can build slowly over weeks.

If early wakes appear after nap dropping, I’d usually suggest bringing bedtime earlier for a few weeks - often around an hour earlier than before.

Even if the nap was dropped months ago, a short reset of earlier nights can help their body catch up and rebalance.

Sleep associations and early morning waking

When we come into lighter sleep overnight or in the early morning, we naturally check our environment (we all do it - adults included.)

So if your child fell asleep:

·  With you lying next to them

·  Being cuddled

·  With you sat outside their door

…but then wakes alone, their brain flags that something has changed. That alert can fully wake them.

So, gradually teaching your child to fall asleep more independently can make a big difference to both night waking and early morning wakes.

If you’re nervous about doing this because you’re worried about the reaction your child is going to have, my Easing Away from Co-Sleeping guide is a really great place to start.

How to respond when your child wakes at 5am

The way you respond to early waking is KEY in whether it sticks around.

If a child wakes early and gets:

·  iPad time

·  TV

·  Comes into your bed

…it can accidentally reinforce the wake-up.

From their perspective, “Waking early = good stuff happens.”

If you do need to get them up, I’d recommend going straight downstairs and starting the day properly rather than having a cosy cuddle in bed.

But ideally, you want to try to keep them in their sleep space until your family’s “start time” (within reason, of course) for your own sanity if nothing else!

Are some children naturally early risers?

I won’t sugarcoat this bit. Yes, some children are biologically wired as early wakers, and getting them past 6am can be tough.

If that’s the case, you can use tools like:

·  A morning toy box

·  Books in their room

·  Quiet activities

So they can play independently until your chosen wake time.

Is hunger causing early morning waking?

Parents ask this one a lot. Once children are beyond the toddler years, hunger is rarely the main cause of early waking.

But if you’re unsure, it doesn’t do any harm to add a small bedtime snack into the bedtime routine to help rule it out.

Things like:

·   Yoghurt

·   Banana

·   Apple + peanut butter

·   Toast

Something filling but not sugary.

Medical causes of early waking in children

In a small number of cases, early waking can be linked to:

·   Mouth breathing

·   Enlarged tonsils

·   Sleep apnoea

·   Intolerances

If your child snores, breathes through their mouth, or seems restless overnight, it’s worth exploring with a GP.

Food intolerances can also occasionally play a role, particularly if digestion is being triggered early in the morning.

If you suspect this, speaking to a GP or dietician is the best next step.

How long does it take to fix early waking?

I’m not going to lie, early waking is a tricky sleep challenge to shift.

It often takes:

·  3–4+ weeks

·  Real consistency

·  A bit of trial and error

But it is changeable. With the right plan, it’s very possible to move wakes from 5am → 6am (and sometimes beyond).

And that extra hour in the morning?

It feels like getting your life back.

Quick recap:

Earlier bedtimes often help

  1. Overtiredness is the biggest driver in under 5’s

  2. Sleep needs begin to decrease in over 5’s

  3. Sleep environment matters

  4. Independent sleep supports resettling

Need help working out the cause?

If you’re not sure which of these factors is driving your child’s early wakes, you can download my Early Morning Waking Checklist to work through each possible cause step by step.

If you’d like help creating a clear, structured plan to tackle it step by step, you can get in touch to see whether a 1:1 package would be helpful.

→ Check out my 1:1 packages

  • Overtiredness, light exposure, sleep habits, or circadian rhythm timing are the most common causes.

  • Usually no - later bedtimes often make early waking worse due to overtiredness.

  • Most families see improvement within a month with consistent changes.

  • It can be during developmental leaps, nap transitions, or routine disruption.

Caroline Goodwin
Next

Is your child’s bedtime a lot later than you’d like? Try bedtime fading to gently shift their sleep schedule earlier.