What do you call the one room in the house that hasn’t fallen in line with the rest of the state of NSW and adjusted to Daylight Savings Time?

Why, it’s the “Queensland Room”, of course – otherwise known as the bedroom of my ridiculously early waking child Harrison!

If you are a regular reader of NappyDaze you will be aware we have long battled with an eternally early riser in our home. However there has been a major development in getting our son to sleep to the much more reasonable time of 6am and it is all thanks to this little Queensland inspired trick.

Allow me to explain this evil parenting plan of ours…

Back when blessed daylight savings kicked in early last month, I was busy doing the rounds of springing the clocks forward an hour when The Husband came up with a novel suggestion.

“Why don’t we keep Harrison’s clock as it is, see if he will sleep a little later?”

At first I was hesitant, because my son has a sixth sense for when it is the birds are on the hunt for those early worms and I figured he’d just unconsciously align his body clock. Then I shrugged, recalling all those 5.15 wake ups and figured anything was worth a try. We’d let his room remain on “Queensland” time, while the rest of the house went about adjusting to the wonderous event that is Daylight Savings time.

And you know what, on that very first morning we didn’t see him until 6.50am (which, ok, was still really 5.50am) and oh my it was heaven! It was then that we knew if we persisted we might be on to something here!

You see, we’d also started trying (albeit not always successfully) to implement a new rule: “DO NOT come into our room until there is a 6 on your clock!” followed by threats of bans from iPads and favourite TV shows if the law was flaunted. We figured by not turning H’s clock back, we might begin to retrain his ridiculously, painfully early wake up times to a much more reasonable one, like oh, 7am! What untold joy (not to mention rest!) that would bring!

The only problem is, the little rascal has started to see ways of flaunting his waking curfew. You see, I don’t mind if he wanders the house before his (supposed) 6am wake up, as long as he avoids coming anywhere near me. Sadly though he has now cottoned on to the fact that there are other clocks in the house. I was shaken awake at 6.10am the other morning when my little mate announced “Mummy, why is there a 6 on the clock in the baby’s room but not on mine?”, his voice laced with confusion.

I cant even recall what sad excuse (ok, blatant lie) I managed to muster in my half asleep state but whatever it was, I think my days of getting away with this dastardly parenting ploy might well be numbered.

And considering we are literally about to embark on a trip to Sunny (Daylight Savings Deprived) Queensland in a few days time, I fear either one of two things might happen. Either we will be back greeting the day at the bleary eyed unsocialable time of 5.30am or if we can still keep the rule of “no getting out of bed before 6am” in play, we might just be able to re-train him again for a 7am sighting at home.

I’ll be of course aiming for the latter in the hope we can keep our “Queensland Room” in play for as long as possible!