Today’s Hint: The Frugal DIY Tot Clock

This week, my daughter finally slept until 6 a.m.

That may seem early to you, but it’s actually late for my 19-month-old (and for my husband and me). Before this week, my daughter’s wake-up time had been creeping up earlier and earlier in recent months to 5 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. territory, so early in fact, that my husband and I decided we needed to do something about it.

We had heard mention of so-called “tot clocks,” clocks specifically designed to let toddlers know it’s time to wake up, whether through colors (blue means sleep and yellow means wake) or moon and sun images. However, I couldn’t imagine shelling out $40 to $50 for such a clock before I tried more frugal alternatives. Lucky, my budget-friendly tot-clock approach, which is today’s hint, worked.

My trick: Just use a regular old digital alarm clock you have around the house.

Here’s what I did: I simply took the digital alarm clock out of my room, and moved it into my daughter’s room. I set the alarm for 5:40 a.m. and told my daughter that when the music (aka the alarm melody) went off, it was morning and time to wake up, and that’s when mommy and daddy would come into her room.

Then, when morning came, even though my daughter cried a bit before the alarm, I didn’t go in her room until 5:40 a.m. when the music started playing. There, I found her in her crib swaying to the music. I mentioned again to my tot that the music meant it was morning, and the next morning, I didn’t hear a peep until the alarm went off at 5:40 a.m.

My husband and I then repeated this process over the course of a week, gradually setting the alarm later and later until we reached 6 a.m. (we’re hoping to eventually reach 7 a.m.).

It turns out I’m not the only fan of frugal tot clock approaches, and digital alarm clocks aren’t the only budget-friendly tot clock options you can consider. Over at Baby Cheapskate, for instance, Angie Wynne covers “3 Easy Ways to Make Your Own ‘Sleep Training’ Clock,” including lights set on a timer (lights on equals time to wake up) and stickers on a wall clock over the numbers that signify when it’s time to wake up. Meanwhile, the site Parent Hacks shares how one parent cleverly turned “an old cell phone with an alarm feature” into a baby clock.

Another idea I’ve come across is to go for a nightlight on a timer (Kirstin writes about this approach over at the site Beautiful Entropy as does Heidi Holvoet over at babysleepadvice). Or if your little one knows his or her numbers, you could try telling him or her that it’s time to wake up when certain numbers come up on a digital clock. My friends used the latter approach successfully, incorporating a bedtime board book with numbers into their routine, and doing “a dream board book” of sorts (they put board books in their daughter’s crib when they went to sleep so she’ll have them to entertain herself before the clock hits 7 a.m).

So how do I know it’s the clock that’s working and not just my daughter changing her sleeping patterns? I don’t, but I do know that my daughter seems to love the alarm melody (she dances to it when we play it for her during the day), and she seems to remember that the clock came from Mommy and Daddy’s room and to feel proud that it’s in her room (it’s the first thing she runs to when she enters her room during the day and an added bonus is that it has a radio that my daughter loves dancing to during the day).

Plus, I figure that if a baby slightly older than a year can learn to be potty trained, then a 19-month-old toddler can understand that music equals morning time.

To be sure, moving the digital alarm clock from my room to my daughter’s room means that my husband and I no longer have an alarm. However, I don’t remember the last time we actually woke up to the alarm rather than to my daughter’s screams, and we can hear the alarm when it goes off through the bedroom walls anyway. In addition, we can set our iPhones if we ever need to wake up extra early.

And of course, there’s always the chance that my tot will wake up at 5 a.m. tomorrow (especially if I fall victim to what Rookie Moms’ Heather Flett calls “the Blogger’s Curse”).

Share your experience with store-bought and DIY tot clocks below. Any models you’d recommend and why? What are your tricks for moving your little one’s wake-up time later?

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