The Gro Company Gro-Clock Sleep Trainer

Jul 14, 2016

Overview

The Gro Company Gro-Clock Sleep Trainer is a clock for children that provides a simple, visual indication of when it’s time to sleep and when it’s time to wake up. It’s a fantastic tool to assist in sleep training your child to adopt more parent friendly sleep patterns. You simply set it up once, then activate it when you put your children to bed. It’s simple to use and has seen some impressive results.

Happy children need happy parents, and happy parents need sleep. The Gro Company Gro-Clock Sleep Trainer will certainly helped with that. If you’re in search of a silver bullet, you’re probably out of luck. Whilst many have found success within days or weeks, I can see that for many it could take months of perseverance. If you consider this a tool to assist with an improved sleep pattern rather than a solution, I think you’ll be very pleased with the results.

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Getting ready for bed

The idea is simple. When it’s time for bed, you read the sleepy farm story book with the child. This introduces them to the concept of the clock and provides an indication that it’s nearly time to goto sleep. You activate the clock by pressing down to select either the sun or the moon setting (explained later), followed by the select button.

Once activated, the sun character closes his eyes, fades away, and is replaced by a blue star. Around the edge of the clock, twelve stars appear which slowly disappear as the night progresses. This allows the child to begin to gain an understanding of how much time is left before it’s morning. For older children, there is a small LCD time display so that they can learn to tell the time.

In the morning, the star closes it’s eyes, fades away and the bright yellow sun character appears. Once the child sees this, they know it’s time to get up.

What comes in the box

The clock is made very well and has a solid construction. The box contains the clock, a mains power supply and a little paperback story book called “Sleepy Farm” to introduce the child to the concept.

A little bit tricky to set up

Whilst the clock is made well, setting it up the first time could be a little easier. Once you’ve adjusted it a few times you’ll get the hang of it. I just feel like i’ve had to fiddle with it a bit more than I should have.

Don’t turn it off

My only real complaint about the Gro-Clock is that if the mains power is removed, the clock stops! It does not lose it’s settings, however you’ll need to set the time again. This is only really a problem during a power cut or when the clock is moved to another position. I feel a simple battery back-up would have removed a lot of frustration here.

Mains connected products do not seem popular in kids rooms and the Gro-Clock seems to get some unfair reviews as a result. Many parents have a baby monitor in their kids bedrooms, so I don’t see this as a significant difference. If you’re extra cautious, you can happily place the clock up on a high wardrobe or shelf so that it cannot be played or interfered with. Up at a hight, the clocks backlight can still be easily seen, although the small numbers telling the time would not be so visible.

The display/face

The backlight is an important feature and it has ten levels to choose from. At the dimmest level it’s dim enough not to light up the room and bright enough for the child to notice it change. It would be nice to have another few levels below this to satisfy the more sensitive sleepers, but I don’t consider this a significant issue.

For older children, there is a small LCD clock face and optional audible alarm. When they start school, you can set an audible alarm and encourage them to get up when it goes off.

Wake up settings

For those of you with differing routines, there are two wake up time settings that can be pre-set. This is a great feature that allows a longer lie in at weekends and an earlier start when at school/nursery. These are indicated as a sun and a moon setting which is a little unintuitive. The intention is obviously for an afternoon/night setting, but I can’t imagine many people use it like this.

Child lock

If you have a child that likes to fiddle, there is a straightforward key locking feature. Holding the down arrow button for a few second activates it. Repeating this action de-activates it. This is not very sophisticated lock, so I would avoid allowing your child to see you enable it. If you’re worried about the child disabling the timer or changing the settings, I would move it out of reach entirely. Remember, this product is mains powered, so it’s not a good idea to allow a small child to play with it.

My experience

I have two children and they both have one of these gro clocks. We introduced them at about 20 months, when they moved out of their cot and they started working for us within just a few days.

Right now, our kids are 30 months and 4 years and they hardly ever wake us up in the night. In the rare occasions they do, we simply ask them:

What colour is your clock?

If they say “blue”, we simply tell them that they have to go back to sleep and they usually just turn over and settle down.

Every morning, as soon as they wake and see it is yellow, we hear:

Mummy, mummy, the clock is yellow!

On occasions, they wake up a little early, but they usually just lie in bed, playing or singing quietly. As soon as they notice it change, they call.

What age can my child use it?

The Gro Company recommends use from two years, however I feel that this is a little too late. If you introduce the clock at around 18 months and turn it on every night, without drawing much attention to it, it is likely to become accepted over a fairly short period of time. You can then simply use it to reenforce “sleep time” message if the child wakes up.

The product does come with a small book that tells a nice story about the sun going down and the star coming out, however many parents choose not to use it. All children are different, so I imagine that this would be very useful for some children.

I personally don’t think that it can be used too early. You’ll just find that you’re turning it on every night and it has little impact. The benefit of this is that by the time the child approaches two years old, it’s not a new thing being introduced as it would appear to have always have been there.

18 months seems to work very well for many parents, however it really depends on the child. I would also say that it would never be too late, it just might take some time to get used to. Perhaps the story could help with this.

How long will it take to work?

For both of my children, I introduced the Gro-Clock at a very young age so it’s difficult to say how long it took to “work”. We took the approach of preventing a problem rather than solving one, so I cannot easily identify a point in time where it helped us turn a corner.

All children are different and are likely to react differently to a product such as this, so I would approach the use of the Gro-Clock as a tool to assist in sleep training a child, rather than having the expectation that it will solve an on-going problem.

Overnight success is not uncommon, however a change in behavior within a few weeks seems to be quite normal. I personally would approach the use of any sleep training clock with the attitude that it could take a few months to have a positive effect.

My best advice is to stick with it. Keep activating it and reenforcing that the blue star means it’s time for sleep.

The good

Sleep - This is the reason anyone buys this product and it’s benefits are worth it’s weight in gold. For many parents, there’s nothing to lose.

The bad

Needs mains power - If you unplug it from the mains, the clock stops. It does not re-set, however you will still need to correct the time before you use it again. The is particularly annoying when you have a power cut or move it.
A bit too bright - Some people find the brightness of the night light too high. Most children do not seem to have this problem (although you’ll probably want it on the lowest setting), however I do feel that there should be dimmer settings available.
Could be easier to set-up - It’s a bit unintuitive to set-up. It’s not hard, it could just be more obvious. The good thing here is that you don’t do it very often.

Conclusion

Yes, there are a few little things that could make this clock perfect, however these are insignificant when weighed up against the benefits of a happy, rested child (and therefore parent) who have had plenty of sleep.

If you are still wondering wether the Gro-Clock will work for you, the fact is you’re not going to know until you try it.