LittleHippo MELLA: Ready to Rise Children's Sleep Trainer, Night Light, Sound Machine and OK to Wake Alarm Clock for Toddlers and Kids - Blush Pink

TLDR: If your kid wakes up way too early, buy this clock and get a routine going. It works.Picture this: You're snug in your end, it's 4am and you are in a deep sleep, when suddenly you ar jolted awake. It must be an emergency, right? No. It's just your 5 year old, up before the sun."Mom, I'm hungry." Those were the first words I heard every morning, like clockwork, around 4am. Who TF wakes up that early?! We'd been trying "You sleep when the sun sleeps." That worked for a while, but the sub stays out late in the summer and comes up early. So we got this clock and never looked back.This clock is very simple to set up. There's a settings button, use it for setting up most everything. You can set it so that a light comes on at a certain time. We set ours for 6:30am since we have to get up around then to get ready for school anyway. When it hits that time, the clock turns green.It also has a night light, you can have the clock face be a certain color during the night. We changed this color to red and told our kid, "When the clock is red, stay in bed." You do have to turn the nightlight on manually every night, but we made it part of our bedtime routine. If you've set it right, the clock will have a sleep face and your night light color of choice (trust me, red is good for this). We also opted to use the white noise sound. This sounds will stay on until you turn it off (now part of our wakeup routine).When it hits your wake time, it will turn green. It stays green for about an hour, then turns off. If you're just starting with this clock, that should be plenty of time. We told our kid if it was green, it was okay to get out of bed. Now that's she's older, she will sleep in a little more. So we tell her as long as it isn't red it's okay to get up for the day.Around this time she also started sharing a room with her little sister (2 at the time). Since we started this so early with her, we never had any trouble with her waking up at the crack of dawn.I cannot comment on battery life, as we leave this clock plugged in. I can say this, even when we unplug it, it keeps its time when you plug it back in. It has survived being knocked off a dresser quite a few times, so it's pretty durable. And not one weird little glitch has popped up. It's also easy to read from both of my kids beds ( they're older and in loft beds now).We have had this clock for almost 4 years. It works and it works consistently. It brought some sanity and much needed sleep back into our home. And it didn't cost a lot to do it. "Mom I'm hungry," are still the first words I hear every morning, but at least it isn't so early now.

Short version: We are very happy with this purchase and would highly recommend this product. We use it as intended for bedtime and “quiet time” (independent play in bedroom instead of nap time) for our three year old. Mella boasts many useful features and is easy to set up. Once you train your child on Mella’s cues, this product could give you back hours of sleep.Want more info? Read on. :)———-Update (April 2024, after 3.5 years): Mella has continued working great! The product is still so helpful with our oldest child and now our middle child, who shares a room with our oldest. We have a child with high functioning autism, and Mella has been a lifesaver with that child’s anxiety regarding bedtime issues (when to stay in bed, wake up, get up, etc.). Mella is a staple in our home, and we’re going to buy another for our youngest child’s room now. I still highly recommend Mella!———Original Review:As expected, we needed to teach our child how to respond to Mella’s cues, but once he understood that and we reinforced our expectations through reward and consequence, our son stopped waking us up at ridiculously early hours in the morning. Training our pretty stubborn and resistant-to-change son to use Mella took around three weeks or so, but it has been so worth it. In addition to waking later, he has mostly stopped the middle of the night wakes, which is great! Mella is also such a nice clock to keep him in his room for his post-lunch quiet time. It works like a charm! In order for the transition to go smoothly, we started the Mella wake time close to the time he was already waking and then slowly and incrementally made that time later to our desired wake time. After that, we taught our son about the “play time” feature which automatically turns on for thirty minutes before the green light, if you select that feature.Our son went from waking us around 5:30 AM to now waking at 7:00 with Mella and then playing quietly and independently in his room until 7:30 AM. AAAND because we use the setting with a quiet light cue (turns green), sometimes our son is so busy that he doesn’t even notice and keeps playing, allowing us even more extra sleep (or extra time with baby).We recently were away from home and didn’t bring Mella, and boy, did we regret it! We didn’t realize how often our son wakes at night, but looks at Mella and goes back to sleep. It gives him security and fosters independence through the “okay to wake” cues. Without Mella, he runs to us in the dead of night desperately asking if it is morning time yet (can’t rely on daylight because of our latitude and gloomy climate). We will be buying an extra cord (since we affixed the provided cord to the wall for safety) so we can bring Mella with us on trips. You can buy an extra cord on LittleHippo’s website for around $7 after shipping.All of the features are very useful and set up is intuitive. You can choose from quite a few nightlight colors, and the set colors that Mella uses are yellow for play time and green for “okay to wake/leave room.” We personally use red at night because it is a more sleep-friendly color and we can say, “red means stay in bed.” Mella has both audible and visual (green light) alarms (you can select either), various sound machine-type white noise sounds, and nap time features, as well as a child lock. Our son would easily switch off the lock though, so we just put Mella out of reach.Our son loves that “Mella” (we call it by its product name) has a face and a personality of sorts. Mella is happy when awake, playful during playtime, and asleep during bedtime. It is an endearing little clock that our son loves. We plan on using it for years to come and changing the settings as our son’s needs change. Maybe he’ll eventually need an alarm to wake him up?It is important to note that although this clock comes with batteries, they are only present to save your settings in the case of the clock losing its power supply (power outage or unplugged). Because of all the features it boasts, Mella needs to be plugged in at all times to work. I found this was the case in the majority of “okay to wake” clocks. Because our son is very curious and will not leave electronics alone, we placed Mella on a floating shelf and covered the cord with a cord protector (see pics).We have no complaints about this clock, and are so thankful that it exists. Our only suggestion would be that LittleHippo consider making a wall mounted clock that can run on rechargeable batteries (charge via USB-type cable). It could attach to the wall via magnets so it’s easy to take down and recharge every couple/few days. Perhaps it could have a simpler design so that it doesn’t use as much energy to run?Thank you, LittleHippo, for such a quality product! You’ve made our lives so much easier. :)