Since we moved no2 son into his big boy bed, our nights have been rather more unsettled than previously. That’s because (unsurprisingly) he’s worked out that he can get out of bed and come and visit Mummy and Daddy next door. And given that his normal waking time is 6.10am, I’d really prefer it if he stayed tucked up safe and sound for another half hour at least.
It was with great hope, therefore, that I came across the ‘Groclock’ (£30 – £35) on one of the web parenting forums that I use. Some people swore by it, some were intrigued and I thought it sounded interesting and worth another look. So I did some desk research (read the reviews on Amazon) which gave pretty positive feedback.
Groclock - time to wake up!
I’ve been using it now for almost 3 weeks, so thought it was worthwhile posting a review.
On the plus side, it’s a nicely designed and packaged product. The little board book that comes with it is great quality cute and my son loves reading it (and in fact has memorised it and can read it to me). You can lock the keys so that your children can’t reset it, which is a bonus. And it gives enough of a glow that the room isn’t in darkness, but it won’t keep them awake either.
On the negative side, it didn’t work for us. It might have done if we’d introduced it as soon as we moved him from his cot to his big boy bed, BEFORE he’d worked out that he could get up when he pleased.  He still wakes during the night, disregards the clock and comes wandering into our bedroom. To be fair, he usually goes back and lies down again nicely when I show him that the sun hasn’t come up, but I still end up getting out of bed!
I’d also have liked the ability to have a different wake-up setting for weekends that could be stored automatically, rather than having to reset the wake-up time every Friday night. Â
In summary, if you’re thinking of moving your little one into their ‘big boy/girl bed’ and are concerned about them getting out of bed early, then get the clock now and start using it before the move. If you’ve already got an early starter, then I’d probably not bother.
We got our Gro Clock after a long period of illness and unsettled sleep with S which had ‘trained her’ into multiple wakings, staying up for hours in the night, early wakings, and generally wandering into our room to get into bed (which Mr M taught her, clever daddy [rolls eyes]). Knowing we needed something to give us a short sharp fix to the problem, which was more habit than anything else, we bought the clock from Amazon (the cheapest online I could find).
S is 32m and is at an age where she really ‘gets’ things, and she loved the clock like a toy from the start. We only read the story book once but she loves the sun winking at her before it turns to the moon (we get her involved every night).
We set the clock to 6.30am – on nursery days she needs to get up at 7am anyway, so 6.30 was a time when we would normally be up and if she was it would be fine for us to handle IYSWIM. We didn’t set a different time at the weekends as we felt she was too young to get the differences in day, so it is set for 6.30am every day.
Admittedly our sleep prolem was not as pronounced as others have been; we were however on the back of over 3 weeks’ rubbish sleep and needed to break the cycle. The first few nights were still unsettled, but we were able to get the drowsy girl back to sleep and bed by telling her it was still ‘moon time’ and she couldn’t get up till ’sun time’. Since then she’s either got up around the same time as the sun comes up on the clock, or snoozed long after, but she’s still excited to see that the sun has come up!
My only grumps – I wish it was battery powered because having to put it in a precious plus socket is a bit of a PITA and restricts where you place the clock in the child’s view. I also wish the sun would stay up for 2h rather than 1, because sometimes when we are very lucky S sleeps past 7.30am and we miss out on the reinforcement of her seeing the sun.
Eventually (after this weekend) we aim to move the sunrise time to 6.45, then to 7am, to get a better guage of her staying in bed a little longer, or even while awake, but so far we are pleased.
[...] awakenings. Our middle son had started to waken earlier each morning (completely ignoring his Groclock) which we were putting down to tha fact that it was starting to get light earlier each [...]