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My daughter (aged 5 is) not at all keen on waking up in the mornings during school days, even though she loves going to her Pre-school.

Once she is up we have no problem, but its the waking up that is hard and can sometimes take 15 minutes of gentle persuasion.

Her service bus collects her at around 7.50 and we have to get ready in a hurry so as not keep the service bus waiting if she doesn't wake up.

I am wondering if an alarm clock ringing will be more fun for her, than me trying to wake her up.

Have any other parents used alarm clocks designed for children? Could it be effective?

flag	asked Nov 22 at 20:21 Emi 9,049●1●4●17

Jon Skeet · Accepted Answer · 2009-11-22 21:49:36Z UTC

It sounds like it would be worth a try - but I suspect you may still have to coax her out of bed. In particular, don't assume that you won't need to just because there's an alarm clock... I can easily imagine the alarm going off, some fumbling to turn it off, and then your daughter going back to sleep.

I'm not sure what the best answer to this is. If I knew some way of getting naturally sleepy people to get up more quickly, I'd use it on my wife ;)

With my kids, I tend to start waking them up significantly before we'll actually need them to be up. Turn the light on, draw the curtains, rouse them a bit etc and then go down to make a coffee and breakfast. Come back up 5 minutes later, repeat the process, enthuse about what a fun day it will be, and so on.

There certainly are alarm clocks designed for children - but if your daughter's 5, she might actually prefer one which made her feel more grown up. I'd definitely consult with her before buying anything...

Meg Stephenson · Answer 2 · 2009-11-22 21:09:06Z UTC

Yes, we have an alarm clock for our daughters. We used to have a fun child-friendly one, but it got broken, and they now have a fairly boring black digital clock, which is just one that we happened to have lying around. It beeps until you turn it off by pushing down a big button on the top.

The only draw back is remembering to make sure it's not going to go off on non-school days. But we've got into the habit now.

mkcoehoorn · Answer 3 · 2009-11-24 18:12:36Z UTC

In school, I had my own alarm clock, but if I ignored it my mom had a couple methods of getting me up. One was to stand outside my door and sing very loudly and off-key. Another method she used, she would wet down a wash cloth and keep it in a plastic bag in the freezer. When my brother or I would refuse to get up, we would find a frozen wash cloth tossed in the vicinity of our bare feet. If she had forgotten to freeze it, she would just grab an ice cube.

When I got to college, I had two alarm clocks. I kept one next to my bed that had a snooze on it. But when I started sleeping through it, I got one of those clocks with the bells on top that don't have snooze buttons (like you see in old cartoons) and would put it across the room so that I had to get up to turn it off. And there was no sleeping through that thing. Between the two I generally got up on time.

Are alarm clocks a good idea for young children?

3 Answers