My 23 year old nephew is staying with me. He’s a great and bright kid, he doesn’t do drugs, and he doesn’t have hearing loss or any type of ADD/ADHD to my knowledge, BUT…
He has a habit that drives me nuts. He’s capable of sleeping through any clock radio or alarm clock ever invented. When I’m in the house I have to listen to rap music blaring for an hour because the clock radio didn’t wake him, and when I’m not there he’s frequently late for appointments or work because he overslept.
Does anybody have any suggestions for some type of storebought or web bought device that is more effective than your average alarm clock at yanking sleepyheads from the enfolding arms of Morpheus? I will gladly buy it for him as a gift.
(Perhaps he has a sleeping disorder, but as he’s currently unensured it’s not feasible to have him tested.)
I know people who use multiple alarm clocks to wake up. One thing for sure is that waking up to music is NOT nearly as good as waking up to an alarm. You can become moderately conditioned to the alarm noise (not “conditioned” but develop the ability to recognize it amidst the fugue of moderate arousal) but not to a radio that will play any song that happens to be on at the time.
You’ve got your basic loud sound, some shaking, and-- as a last resort-- sharp little claws to the scrotum.
Personally, I use two alarm clocks. The normal one is beside my bed. The really, really loud one is set to go off 15 minutes after the first, and it is placed on the other side of the room so that I have to get up and walk over to it.
What about using a timer. The kind that that plugs into the wall and then you plug devices into it (ie coffee pot, lights etc…). What if you plug something loud/annoying into that, maybe a vacuum cleaner or a fan directed at him. Also I would suggest making sure it’s close enough (in the room) to be heard and wake him up and far enough way that he has to get out of bed to turn it off. Now if he’s the type that will turn it off and go back to bed, then that’s another story.
When I was a teenager I used to set the alarm to maximum radio volume and still sleep through it… Until the day my father who had just finished working midnight shift and had just gotten to sleep at about 7am was awoken by my alarm clock going on and on. He solved my problem by storming in my room ripping the clock out of the wall and smashing it on the floor. Solved my sleep problem but the therapy continues (LOL).
Seriously though I have set mutiple alarms all which require me to get out of bed to turn them off/hit snooze. I also have set alarm clock, alarm on pager, and scheduled my voice mail to call me at wake up time.
Just bought my teen age son an alarm clock that has feature to wake up to standard alarm bell, chimes or church bells.
Or a music you (Sampiro) can stand. Maybe it’ll be the same thing.
I have the same problem myself and have found no cure, other than going to sleep early. Sometimes I have some whiskey in the evening, otherwise I won’t get sleepy till 2am. The ultimate cure is to spend a week in the US - after I get back, if I’m careful I can sustain the jet lag for about 10 days.
I’ve heard of an alarm which inflates a bag placed under your sheet or pillow. I don’t know where you can get one though.
A number of years ago, I got an alarm clock that has the most annoying alarm known to man. It emits a high-pitched, grating series of beeps that sound kinda like a dive alarm in a submarine. I keep it across the room, so I have to get up out of bed to turn it off. The damn thing is so annoying that I have to get up. And it won’t automatically turn off, it just keeps blaring and blaring. I suggest finding something he absolutely can’t stand.
There is nothing more effective than dad and a bucket of cold water!
If your nephew is like certain of my children, I don’t really think it is a matter of waking up. I sincerely believe it is more of a matter of wanting to “snooze”, just a bit longer. They hear the alarm and ignore it.
I’m still trying to teach my 18 year old, that when the alarm goes off, the feet hit the floor.
All my kids have a bad habit of setting the alarm clock 1/2 hour before they REALLY want to get up and then go back to sleep.
A low-budget option is to take a clock/radio, put it between two channels and crank the volume, and let’r rip. You can screen out music, some of you can even screen out alarm noise, but there’s no way in hell you can lay there when a hideous mix of static and two seperate programs is blaring at you.
And put it far away from the bed, natch.
My grandfather used to honest-to-God do this, based on the testimony of himself, my father, uncles, and aunts.
He trained the kids to get up when first called in the morning by one, simple, elegant means. He would call them loudly for breakfast. And when they didn’t come down in 5 minutes, he would go out to the horse trough, get a bucket of ice cold water, come up to their bed, and douse them with it.
According to all my relatives, they never had a second dousing. And to this day, when their alarm first goes off in the morning, they are UP, and “at 'em”.
I don’t know, maybe I’m different but NO alarm clock works for me. I get up before I need to since I don’t have something to wake me. It works for other people that have asked me the same thing you’re talking about.
Most people count on their clock getting them up and then curse it and sleep anyway. Of course, a person has to have a sense of responsibility. Getting to bed at a decent time doesn’t hurt either.
If this doesn’t work…hire a neighbor/kid to do the job. Tell them to haul ass though when they dump the water!
Yeah, nothing quite beats a drill sergeant playing the “trash can lid song” at 0430.
My sister is deaf and has some sort of vibrating rod that goes underneath her mattress with a wire trailing back to the alarm clock. My wife had the misfortune of being woke up by this device. She came out of the room shaking and looking like she’d seen a ghost. You might check out some hearing impaired oriented web sites for stuff like that.
