Friday Favorite: The Clock That Will Save Your Sanity

(This is NOT a sponsored post.  My Friday Favorites will never be sponsored.  However, I am an affiliate with Amazon; so if I do share something through them and you make that purchase, I get a very small part of that.  It doesn’t raise your price at all.  I will only ever share things that I genuinely love and think will be helpful for you and your family.  I’m all for transparency about these things!)

May I wax poetic about a clock for a moment, here?

This clock has saved my sanity, my husband’s sanity, and restored good sleeping patterns for all three of my children.  We take it with us everywhere we go, and if my house lit on fire I’d be tempted to snatch if from the flames.

It’s called the “OK to Wake! Children’s Alarm Clock and Nightlight.”

(EDIT: For some reason, by the end of the day I posted this product wouldn’t show up on Amazon.  Here is a good alternative and here is the clock on Target’s website.  I’ll let you know when it’s up and running on Amazon! EDIT #2: It’s back up!!!)

I had heard about it early into my mothering and hemmed and hawed about buying it for a YEAR, because spending $20+ on a clock for my kids made me want to vomit.  But once we got it, we wished we had bought it so, so much sooner.

Here’s why we initially got it: We live in a small house and it was time to transition two of my kids into a shared room with a bunk bed.  This led to one child waking the other one up early every morning or at all hours of the night.  Much drama and exhaustion ensued.  But once we got this clock, we were able to use it to help train our children to not wake each other (or mom or dad) up.  You set the clock to light up a bright green when it IS that time to wake up.  You can also set a nap time alarm as well, which can be used as a quiet time monitor, too.  It doesn’t actually create sound when it lights up and my kids have even slept through the light many times, which I actually wanted to happen.  Real loud alarm clocks can happen when they’re older!

This is how we trained our children using this clock:  We sat them down and taught them about the clock.  When it’s time to get up, the clock glows green.  If the clock isn’t green, it’s still night time.  For older kids, I used bribery to get this point across–so feel free to use your sticker charts and prize baskets to your benefit here.  After a week or so, you won’t need to use bribery.  Now, when a child wakes up early and sees the clock isn’t lit up yet, they know to either go back to sleep or play very, very quietly in their beds until the clock is indeed glowing.  Every few months or longer, we’ve had to gently retrain them.  I know some people have said that their kids ignore the clock, which is a bummer!  But I think my kids just happen to respond to fake tattoos and stars really well at this point when we need to retrain.  Or just my threats…  If they wake up occasionally too early, I just direct them back to the room, point at the clock, and leave–no debate.  I don’t come back in.  But usually, a good start/point/reward system has done the trick for us!

For even younger kids, it involves more of a traditional sleep training.  A few months ago, our 21 month old at the time started waking up at 5:30 AM every morning and refusing to go back to sleep.  Then he slowly started waking up earlier, and earlier.  We were all exhausted, especially him.  So I bit the bullet and knew it was going to take a few hard early mornings to train him.  I borrowed the clock from my big kids’ shared room and brought it into his.  Although he couldn’t talk that well at the time, I did a whole show of the clock, pointing to it and saying “Night night!  It’s night time.”  Then I’d make the clock glow (you can press one of the “feet” to do this) and would say “Yay!  Time to wake up!”  And I’d play it out for him over and over, pretending to be asleep, waking up seeing it was still “night time,” going back to sleep, then waking up to the actual glow.

Now mind you, that still will only go so far.  That first morning, when he woke up at 4:30 I simply came in and pointed at the clock and said, “It’s still night night!” and left the room.  Then I didn’t come back in.  Yes, he screamed. And I am the worst sleep trainer ever–I haven’t been able to bear my babies cry it out well because I’m a wuss.  But as an almost 2 year old, I knew the kid could handle it.  He was irate for an hour, but went back to sleep.  I knew when the clock was set to go off and came in when it should be glowing (I set it at 6:20 AM and gradually worked my way back up to 7:15 AM), then I’d make a huge deal of the clock glowing and that it was time to wake up.  The first few days entailed crying from him, but gradually less and shorter lengths of time too.  After 2-3 days, I didn’t even come in if he woke up a bit early.  Now, he’s back to waking up at the normal time!  It’s fabulous!  I think this could work with even younger kids using this method, and I plan to use it earlier on with my next child.

So, if you’re like us and your kids–young and a little less young–are giving you the hardest time in those early morning hours, buy this clock, put in a few days of training them in a way that they’re accustomed to, and get back your sanity!!!!!!!!

Get it here.  (It’s cheaper than when I bought it two years ago, so yay!)