sleep training and changing schedules

Hi All:

For months, my son was going to bed by 6:45pm and getting up between 5:45-6:15am. In the beginning he used to get up at 4:30-5am which I managed to move to around the current time. But with his grandparents around- we have regressed back to 5am. I think with sleep training again, I can manage to move it back up to 6am but wanted to find out if anyone has managed to move it to 7am and how?


Because he gets up so early, he needs a morning nap which he should be cutting down on, now that he is 12 months and he is cutting down on his afternoon sleep by 0.5-1hr which in turn makes him really tired by 6pm. I want to move his sleep time to 7-7:15pm but we seem to be stuck in this cycle which I don't know how to get out of.


Also, does sleep training ever stop? My son has been really good but every so often there is a crying spell. We are expecting our second and I am paranoid that I will perpetually have 2 babies crying at the same time.


Thanks!

What we did was to set an alarm. We intentionally set it early enough at first that it would wake the kids up [a short period of acclimation], and then moved the time out by 5 mins per day [roughly] until it was at a time we could accept. They still woke up before the alarm, but instead of calling for us, they would chat with each other from their beds.


My son is 14 months now, and I just cut out his morning nap [which was only 30-45 mins], by just not letting him take one. I spent about a week making sure that we were doing something exciting at naptime, and then moved his lunchtime up an hour and put him down for his afternoon nap right afterwards. This worked great for us -- took two short naps [30-60 min range] and made one long one [generally about an hour 20 mins].


Sleep training stops when they become teenagers and want to sleep all day. However, it is common for the birth of the second to have a profoundly positive influence on the sleep of the first... eventually. For us, it was a rough couple of months with the elder, but then we moved them in together in a tiny bedroom and after 3 days they both started to sleep much better than either of them had on their own. Even if one of them has a nightmare or is teething or is screaming to wake the dead for some other reason, it rarely wakes the other one up.


Another thing that very strangely worked well for me is that I told the elder that only one child is allowed to cry at a time. I guess a lot of rules of life must seem pretty arbitrary at that age...

Oh, alarm is a great idea! I did that to potty train our puppy! Thats funny!:) I am so relieved to hear that it is possible that after both the kids become somewhat used to each other their crying may not wake the other one up.