I heart the Gro-Clock

For about six months now, Harry has been waking in the night and coming into our room. He walks in, says "I had a bad dream" (he doesn't seem like he's had a bad dream – he's not scared or upset) and then either David or I take him back to his room, put him back in bed, give him a kiss and he goes straight back to sleep. And then he gets up around 5-5.30 wide awake and ready for the day.

It happens every single night. Usually twice. On Monday night it was four times. We've tried threats of taking away computer or TV time (total failure). We've tried incentives (that worked for about a week). We asked him what he thought would work. He suggested a new Build-a-Bear that he could "huggle" whenever he woke up. We bought him one. It didn't work. (The boy plays us for fools!) We've tried flat out refusing to get out of bed and return him to his room, but that caused a meltdown and we don't want to risk waking Joe as well, obviously.

So after Monday night, we'd had enough. I asked on Twitter for advice (of course) but no one had any suggestions. I googled and found quite a few people with the same problem asking for help, but didn't find anyone offering solutions (I also found someone who'd returned their child to bed EIGHTEEN times the previous night so, you know, it could be worse).

I'd looked at the Gro-Clock Sleep Trainer a few times and thought Harry was probably too old for it to work, but I read the reviews on Amazon, saw lots of helpful comments from Rob, the creator of the clock, and so emailed him to ask if he thought it would work on a 7-year-old. He said yes (I know: he would, wouldn't he? But after reading his comments on Amazon I trusted him. He seems to go above and beyond, customer service-wise.) So I ordered one.*

Harry was very excited about it (as was Joe). We set it up. We explained to him (as we've done many times) that if he woke up he should look at the clock, see that it was still nighttime and go back to sleep. I set 'morning' to start at 6.00am (David suggested 6.30, I told him not to push his luck). Harry asked me to set it for 6.02 cos he's funny like that.

When me and D went to bed, David said, "I doubt he's going to stay in bed all night, is he?" "No," I said. "Probably not."

At 5am I woke and thought, Harry hasn't been in. I lay there feeling a bit discombobulated. I fretted a bit. I actually considered going in to check he was okay. I resisted.

At 6.02 Harry came in, beaming. "I stayed in bed all night!" he said.

Yep. He did.

* If I'd ordered it from The Gro Company and it hadn't worked, I could have sent it back for a full refund, but I didn't – I ordered it from Amazon because it was quite a lot cheaper. Sorry, Rob.

{No one asked me or paid me to write this. I'm writing it because I'm thrilled that it worked!}