2.5 year old and time???

[Nicole730]

My son is starting to get the concept of time, he somewhat understands how days work, and when we say we'll do something tomorrow, he gets that. But, he is obsessed with it always being 'morning'. Because if it's morning, he gets to be awake. He's laying in bed now, reading his stories and repeatedly asking if it's morning. Even though I've told him a gazillion times that after nighttime, it's morning, then afternoon, evening, and nighttime again. I show him where the sun is in the sky for different parts of the day, I show him clocks and talk about how they work, and we have a clock puzzle we use. We also have read books that go through the day. If he is overtired, which often happens if he doesn't nap, he will cry/scream - not evening, it's morning or not bedtime, it's morning - over and over and over and over.

Is this something that will just click one day? Or what else can I try? Thanks!

[blizzard_babe]

Originally Posted by Nicole730

But, he is obsessed with it always being 'morning'. Because if it's morning, he gets to be awake.

I think we have the same 2.5 y/o!

Except DS has cast aside ASKING if it's morning and has started INSISTING it's morning at bedtime. He quickly discovered that if he asked, we could just say no. Now, we'll think he's asleep, and then hear a jolly, "OK, it's morning! I can getting up now! Breakfast time!" No more of this asking the silly adults... he's just gonna tell us what's up .

No clue when it ends... I'm guessing they figure it out on some level much sooner than they let on, sneaky little tooters .

ETA: We have the added bonus of it still being quite light at bedtime, so we get, "It's not dark out! It CAN'T be nighttime!" Silly Alaska .

[ellemenope]

I think the issue is not his understanding of time, but that he doesn't want to go to sleep. Like you said, he knows that in the morning he gets to 'awake'.

I am going through this right now. It is a huge deal.

In the last month, DD has gone from pretty easy going about going to sleep, to fighting till her last blink. She lies in bed with her eyes open letting me know periodically that she is still awake.

Today, she finally fell asleep in my ergo for her nap, but when I layed her down in bed she popped up, and mumbled a bit incoherently because she was still half-asleep, "Mommy, I am awake. I am not asleep." This used to never happen, but it happening more and more lately.

She starts to get panic attacks as the sun goes down. She says things like, "I wish it could be morning," and "I'm going to stay up till morning."

I lie down with her when she goes to sleep, and it it darn near impossible to get her to sleep when she is not on board. She is 26 months old and we have tried skipping her nap, and she still will stay up to midnight before we finally pass out and assume she has fallen asleep as well.

In the next coulple of weeks we are going to really focus on routine, try to implement an earlier wake-up, and just keep talking about how we must go to sleep so we can wake up and do a bunch of fun things.

[Nicole730]

Thanks!

At least we're not alone. Today he told us where the sun rises and sets, so maybe we're making progress...