<p>Too funny! Well, DD has her first college 8:00am class in a few hours.</p>
<p>At home she got up on her own, got ready and left for school before we all started to wake. High school starts at 7:30 and to get a parking spot you better be there early. When I have had to wake them for whatever reason there are 2 sure fire ways. 1. Turn off their ceiling fan. This will jolt both girls out of bed. Should add that they are not happy campers when I do this. 2. Open their shutters. Yep, ticks them off just as well.<br>
What can I say, as a mom I found great ways to agitate my kids.</p>
<p>It’s a good idea to put the alarm out of reach from the bed so he’ll have to get up.</p>
<p>Some students do have difficulty waking up either on their own or with an alarm clock, that is why I would never use room darkening curtains in a student’s bedroom. Think about it, the natural progression of the sun rising and lighting the room is a more gentle way to awaken. This way when the alarm rings, your student is not too deeply asleep. Placing the alarm across the room forcing your student to get up in order to shut it off is probably a good idea as well. Most phones have multiple alarm settings, so you can set several staggered wake up alarms. </p>
<p>You would be surprised at how many new students are exhausted during their first semester, and will find it necessary to take " power naps"’. Remind them to set a wake up alarm so they won’t miss an evening lecture or event. There are some professors who take attendance into consideration when calculating the grades, or some who give frequent surprise quizzes. Better not miss those classes! Actually, freshman should try not to miss any classes.</p>
<p>Several weeks before classes begin, students should start to wake up early. Yes, during the summer. This will help them to reset their internal clock. Have them go to bed earlier so they are not missing any sleep, this way they will begin the semester well rested.</p>
<p>Having ones alarm clock in a location which requires getting out of bed to turn off the alarm clock is a good idea, as is setting multiple alarms.</p>
<p>I’ve known quite a few people who take two 3-4 hour naps rather than sleeping 6-8 hours. this takes some getting used to however.</p>
<p>There are some exceptions to the don’t be your college student’s alarm clock rule, which include when they absolutely need to take a nap before a big exam and when they have to get up early for a flight. Taking 5 minutes out of ones day to help them out in these cases could save a lot of money and stress in the long run.</p>
<p>DD awoke on time for class this morning. Got there in plenty of time. Said it was a 15 minute walk from Lakeside.</p>
<p>Thanks to all the replies
gotta love this UA forum! Many of them were laugh-out-loud funny!</p>
<p>@Malanai: LOL regarding the alarm clock hack with the TWO car horns. His three roomies would HATE him.</p>
<p>@Lisa6191: Thankfully no 8am classes his first semester, although hes gone through about ten iterations of a class schedule since BamaBound. He may have to take up your offer for roomie #1 to be his backup! 
I dont blame you (or any of his roomies or suites next door) for being concerned over a loud alarm clock.</p>
<p>@aeromom: thanks for the insight into sleep theory. Wow
never thought of it that way.</p>
<p>What got us thinking is to find a clock that did not rely only on sound. For example, what alarm clocks do the hearing impaired use? The vibrating function in the pillow was the true draw to the clock we ordered. </p>
<p>Thanks again everyone!</p>
<p>I had to chuckle at this thread. My 15 year old son is impossible to wake up. He sleeps through the vibrating sonic boom alarm clock while the dog is cowering in the corner. He goes to bed during the school year around 9:30. In the summer and on weekends he can easily sleep 14 hours night after night (though he usually gets up at 4 to eat then goes back to sleep). Please assure me that he will outgrow this.</p>
<p>Make sure he understands what the consequences could be. My son sounds very similar. He has learned to get himself up. Last semester he slept through a test (not an 8:00 a.m.) one. Teacher would not let him make it up. He had to drop it and took it this summer at home. I am happy to say he has gotten himself for work all summer. He works at Legoland. If they are late at all twice, they are fired.</p>
<p>Kids are different. My daughter needs more sleep than my son and she’s 19 and he’s 16.</p>
<p>He understands the consequences and is very concerned about them… after all it was HIS idea, not mine, to research and find a possible solution.</p>
<p>We have even tried the alarm clock that has a helicopter that launches and lands somewhere in the bedroom. In order to shut off the alarm one must get up out of bed to find it and then reattach to the alarm to shut it off… he sleeps right through that. </p>
<p>It’s amazing to watch him sleep right next to a clock radio blaring “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath. </p>
<p>Now I’ve probably alarmed (pun intended) the parents of his three roomies! Right, Lisa6191 ?!</p>
<p>My S is very much like 3kidsinhs’s. Knowing he was NOT an early riser, his earliest scheduled class for first semester was 10:00. However, when he stayed up late to…study (or whatever else may have been keeping him up), 10:00 was apparently still too early.</p>
<p><em>I</em> was the one close to hyperventilating when he decided to tell me that one morning he’d overslept when he had a calculus exam and when he got up, he rushed to class, but only had time to finish about half the exam before time ran out. He just kept telling me it was no big deal because they could use the final exam to replace their lowest exam score, so he’d be able to drop the exam anyway. I, still near hyperventilation, was saying, but if you overslept once, how do you know it won’t happen again???</p>
<p>This summer he’s working an internship. He starts working at 7AM. He has a 30-45 minute commute. So he’s getting up between 5 and 5:30 AM to get ready and get there on time. So far, he hasn’t been late once. </p>
<p>I guess money is more important to him than grades?</p>
<p>I hope that he’s in the habit of getting up now because this fall he has an 8AM course required for his major that isn’t offered at any other times. </p>
<p>One thing I recommend is looking for an alarm clock that will allow you to set different wake up times for different week days. I think that sometimes my S was shutting his alarm off for the weekend and forgetting to turn it back on to get up on Monday mornings.</p>
<p>I have an airhorn. And a water pistol. They don’t always work, either. </p>
<p>But when DS went to a camp this summer that required working out at 6:00 am before breakfast, he found a way to wake up and get to the workout site.</p>