Every morning, between 4:30 and 5:30, two-year-old Carrie stands up in her crib and cries: ?Mommy, Daddy!? Bleary-eyed, her mother, Wendy Chau, talks to her through a two-way monitor: ?Lie down, Carrie. It?s bedtime.? Carrie inevitably screams ?No!? She?s awake and ready to start the day. Her mother, not so much. ?I silently pray that Carrie will fall back to sleep on her own, or that I?m reading the clock wrong. But neither is ever true,? says Chau, who is on maternity leave after giving birth to her second child, Cameron, in July. She?d be happy if her daughter would even sleep until 6 a.m.
Hilary Myron, a paediatrician who works in the Children?s Hospital of Eastern Ontario?s sleep clinic, says that some toddlers may rise and shine before the sun because of their chronotypes?a scientific term for biologically being a morning lark or night owl. In other words, their internal clocks are telling them to get up. Or it could be that your toddler went to bed early and got all the sleep she needed by 5 a.m., or that she actually hasn?t been sleeping enough. ?If a toddler is waking up really early, it?s often because she?s tired, because sleep was lost somewhere,? says Alanna McGinn, a sleep consultant in Burlington, Ont. ?It could be because naps were taken away too soon, or that bedtime is too late.?  .related-article-block{display:inline-block;width:300px;padding:.5rem;margin-left:.5rem;float:right;border:1px solid #ccc}@media (max-width: 525px){.related-article-block{float...