young children not getting enough sleep

That's rough. My 4 year old daughter has slept from 8-7ish pretty much since Day 1. It's awesome.

Is their room dark early in the morning or does the sun light it up?

Also, what we do with our little ones is when they wake up this early, lay back down with them in their bed until they get adjusted to sleeping in a little later. Our three get up anywheres from 6:30 - 8:30.

Blackout curtains helped my oldest go from 30 min naps to 3 hr naps. I'd say that's a good start.

Do they wake up hungry/thirsty? Have sugar right before bed? I've noticed either of these issues will affect sleep of my boys.

Are they in the same room? The younger one may be waking up and getting the older one up and that's Why 6 year old is always tired.


Agree with others about room darkening shades and a white noise machine. Could be something as simple as pets barking or cars driving by that's waking one or both up.

Hate to say it but that's pretty normal for young kids. My almost 7 year old is just getting to the point where we have to wake him up in the mornings for school. On the weekends he is up by 7 at the latest.

My 3 year old is up by 5:30-6 every morning, regardless of bedtime.

Normal bedtime for both of them is 8:30-9

Good suggestions so far.

Try a fan for white noise before buying something special.

I don't know if they are all in grade school yet, but my kids need to be up and moving by 6:15 just to make the bus.

8pm bedtime this time of year practically requires black out curtains. We suspected our kids weren't really sleeping until around 9pm despite a 8:00 bedtime due to the late sunset

Ours are usually in bed around 830. At one point, we started having that problem (7 and 4 year old boys). They would both be up by about 6 every morning whereas they used to sleep almost 12 hours.

Turns out, daylight was waking the oldest up, then he would want to play Xbox or whatever before everyone got up. He then proceeded to wake the youngest up on purpose so that he could have someone to play with. We let them do their own thing when they get up. They can fix their own milk and morning snack so we didn't have to get up with them......but they needed to be getting more sleep.

Blackout curtains and a talk with the oldest about how he didn't have to get up as soon as his eyes opened and he sure enough didn't need to wake the youngest up on purpose. That took care of that.

My wife saw a clock on Pinterest that has hours colored off, from 4-6 it's red which mean stay in bed, 6-7 is yellow which means they can go use restroom and play quietly in their room, 7-9 is green which means come out of their room. When they wake up, I am guessing they come straight to you. They are getting attention which is what they want.

The clock will keep them in the room and away from the attention. After a couple of weeks of waking up and seeing red, and not getting attention, they will go back to sleep.

Good luck

Blackout curtains and white noise generator.