A health visitor has revealed the precise reasons why babies, toddlers and children wake up before 6am, alongside how to stop it from occurring.
Ruth, a health visitor who provides parenting advice on TikTok, offers guidance for families at different stages, from pregnant mothers to those dealing with toddlers and older children.
Earlier this week she uploaded a video tackling a widespread problem for parents - children getting up before 6am.
Whilst many children are naturally early risers, Ruth outlined several potential causes for why a child might be waking up early, along with numerous strategies to try and address it.
The NHS states that toddlers aged between two and three should sleep for approximately 9-12 hours at night with one nap of roughly 1-2 hours during the day.
For babies under one year old, this ranges from a total of 18 hours of sleep to 15 hours, whilst children from two to five require just 12 hours.
Ruth explained: "Let's talk about why your little one is waking up earlier than 6am. My name is Ruth from Health Visitor in England, let's get into it. First things first, we want to rule out any external influence.
"Is it that there is light coming into their room and it's what was waking them up? Is it that something at 5am is going past their window every single day and it is disturbing them? Is it that they are too cold, especially this time of year, sometimes a handy tip with that is just putting some socks on them.
"So we want to make sure the room is dark, we want a fan or some kind of white noise to drown anything outside out, and make sure they're warm enough."
Ruth also explained that putting children to bed too early can result in them waking up at the crack of dawn. She explained: "For a lot of babies, toddlers and children, only some of them require 10 or 11 hours of night time sleep. Some, 9, some less.
"If you look at the whole clock of 24 hours as well and they're getting lots of daytime sleep and then you're putting them to bed at 6pm or 7pm and they only require 10 hours of night time sleep, that sleep cup's is full.
"So therefore, putting them to bed a little bit later is something that can help. And that can be as subtle as 15 minutes every couple of nights until you get through to the time in which they stop waking so early."
For little ones who still have several naps throughout the day, Ruth noted that if their first nap occurs too soon after they wake up, it could be worsening the problem.
She explained: "Number three, they may be using that first nap of the day if it's too early to catch up on that sleep. So if they're waking up at 5am in the morning and then you're putting them back down at 6am because they can't stretch any longer, that can actually be reinforcing that early rising.
"What we want to do is either make that first nap really, really, really short and not class it as a nap, or start making it a little bit later, even again by five minutes each couple of days."
Another factor that can disturb sleep is significant developmental milestones as children master new abilities such as rolling, clapping, crawling, walking and talking.
Ruth explained: "The fourth thing, it could be development. Quite often we see with little ones who are toilet training or in the thick of toilet training or they're ready to start wanting to take their nappies off through the night but not quite releasing that hormone yet. We can often see they wake early because the bladder is full and they need to go for a wee.
"And then it can be really hard for them to get back to sleep because cortisol is the hormone that is released in the morning, which is your get up and go hormone. So if therefore they're awake now, we can struggle.
"If you wake up at 5am in the morning it can be really difficult to go back to sleep. And it's a bit of a skill to learn, especially when you are older, you're able to do it. When you're younger, it can be really hard.
"So with these toddlers, I recommend getting a GroClock, You can get them on Facebook marketplace and you set the time, but set a realistic time initially.
"So say they're waking at 5am, set it for 5.30am, then a few days later, 5.45am, a few days later, 6am. And also with these little ones, you want to still treat it like night time."
In the end, if mums and dads have attempted all of Ruth's suggestions, she acknowledged that some youngsters are simply natural early birds. She advised: "If they are not going back to sleep, some children are early risers, making sure there's things in their room that are age appropriate books, things that you're happy for them to do, but they have to wait for that clock to wake up.
"That's what my children do. They are older now, but they read, they play, they can write because I'd leave pens and pencils with them now because they're older, but setting realistic expectations that some children will never wake at 7am. And that's unfortunately how it is."