Early morning waking, help!

Definitely don’t leave him in the crib- that’s kind of evil. This is apart of the sleep regression. The 18 month sleep regression is typically due to separation anxiety. I think leaving him would only worsen those symptoms.
When my babe went through this she would wake early as well and typically get sleepy by 6am or so and take an early nap. They actually call it a continuation of sleep because they didn’t get their full stretch at night. Then just adjust your nap accordingly. Probably won’t have to adjust it too much. Maybe +/- hour. He should only be on one nap at this age.

Otherwise just keep your normal routine.
Regressions are something you just need to tough out, it’ll be over in a few weeks max.

What's his nap schedule look like?

at daycare, wake 6(usually, though now 5am) but nap is always 12-3. He sleeps really well there so we do 8 for bedtime

He might need less sleep during the day! At this age they need (on average) 13 hours of sleep. My son gets 2 hours at daycare and 10.5-11 at night.

My suggestion is to have daycare put him down last, and/or wake him a little early. See how that works for a week :)

And we instituted a minimum morning awake time, meaning we do not pick him up until 6:30am (bedtime is 7:30). It's true that this could be a regression, BUT they are also learning to test boundaries. Picking him up early because he's awake reinforces his behavior. If he wasn't sleep trained, I wouldn't suggest that! Leaving him there gives him a chance to doze a little longer. We do it, right?

We had early mornings for a while and that was the suggestion we were given by our sleep consultant :) When/if he wakes early, he just babbles and plays and (most of the time) falls back asleep.

We taught her to look at her clock. She knows that red is bed and I will not come in for her. Green is wake-up time, and I'll be in real soon. Originally, I had it set to what time she had been waking up recently (which was like 6am). Once it looked like she was figuring it out I started changing the time by 5 minutes every other day as a test to make sure she was understanding the color but also to slowly integrate her to the time I wanted her up at (I also pushed her bed time back, she now goes to bed at 830 am to wake up at 8 am). If she wakes up in the middle of the night, she usually looks at the clock and collapses back to sleep. If she knows it's getting close to time, she quietly plays. I've actually started introducing the yellow light, which is the signal it's okay to play quietly. It's set to 15 minutes before the green light right now.

But yes, the most important thing is I will not get her early just because she is awake. Even if she cried (which she doesn't do anymore). There are exceptions for sickness and what not.

amazing! What age did you teach her this at and..how?! If they aren’t talking yet?

Two friends were having bedtime issues with their kids, too, and ended up buying it as well. One had a 2 year old that also took 1 week to get the hang. The other one had a 3 yr old who fought her, and it took them about 3 weeks for him to actually look at the clock.

silly question, do you just go in at the same time(when it’s green) everyday to teach them how it works?

The how is just set ot up to whatever times your toddler already is naturally going to sleep and waking. Set it right next to them so as soon as they wake they had no choice but to look at it (ours was sitting on top of the space heater right in front of her as it was the perfect height for her to see in the crib) and you just make sure you are watching your watch and the second it is time for green you immediately walk in. I pointed to clock and said Mello (clocks name) is green! Let's get up! When it was bed time she watches me turn it red and I lay her down and pointed to Mello. "Red is bed". If she got back up and repeat, lay her down "red is bed". It's all about consistency.

When she wasn't fighting bed time or completely melting down in the morning, I started also noticing when she woke up she was looking towards the clock. As soon as it turned green she would stand up and look at door. At that point I started pushing the time back by 5 minutes every other day.

Now days I don't have to be at the door at 8am. She doesn't mind if I'm 10 minutes late as she knows green, I'll be there soon enough. Many times recently she's actually sleeping in now. I suspect it's because the warmer weather we been outside running around more. I just watch her monitor and get her whenever she does wake up (after 8am of course)

Yes, in the beginning I was very precise. I knew within 10 seconds of it turning green and I was opening that door. And drawing her attention to the green light first.

Maybe try a slightly later bedtime? I think using the word “evil” here to describe allowing your healthy sleepy kid to stay in their safe warm crib is a bit dramatic. If my son is happy and quiet in his crib, he can enjoy quiet time in there for about an hour past actually waking up. If he wakes up at 6 am, I leave him in there to his toys and own devices until 7 unless he’s upset. Now if they’re screaming and hollering, that’s different.

In what reality has your baby sat quietly in the dark in their crib for 2 hours? lol

we pushed it back 15 mins and no luck :( we used extinction to sleep train before and worked quickly and well, but he is usually crying and screaming at the 4 or 5 am wake up which makes it harder. I do wonder if it’s separation related but bedtime has been okay

this is all so helpful, thank you!

we will give shorter naps a try. We used extinction to sleep train before and he overall did pretty well with it. We were worried it was teething initially which is why we got him right away at 4-5 am but now I wonder if it’s a bit of learning boundaries. We may try to leave him in the crib a bit, but he usually doesn’t self settle for the AM wakes.

Yes, my son woke at 430am today and I've been dragging since. Now he's so grumpy that it's barely 6pm and we are doing bedtime because everyone in the house is tired.
I wouldn't mind trying the clock idea but for those who have toys for their tots, where do you keep the toys so they are accessible? We tried toys before and my son would wake at 3am then just start playing with his toys. We had to take them away so that he was bored and after realizing there was nothing to do, he went back to sleep cause he also realized he was still really tired.

Sleep train in bunny could help!