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How to make your child sleep: A celebrity consultant reveals her five magic rules so many parents get wrong including the REAL time to put them to bed

How to make your child sleep: A celebrity consultant reveals her five magic rules so many parents get wrong including the REAL time to put them to bed

Daily Mail​17-06-2025

Have you seen the '5 to 9' trend on social media? Popular among Gen Z, it involves people sharing videos of their early morning routines – between 5am and 9am – which normally include lighting candles, exercise, journaling and many minutes spent crafting the perfect matcha latte.
Unfortunately there is a whole separate group of 5am-ers who are having a less Instagrammable time as dawn breaks: parents of young children. For the past six months, my second child (now 18 months) has regularly risen for the day between 4.30am and 5.30am, and our #5to9 features nappy changes, climbing the sofa, playing with Duplo, and a fair amount of crying (from all parties involved). Often I've found myself visiting the playground as the sun rises, or pushing the buggy around waiting for my local coffee shop to open at 6am.

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