Someone once said to me that holidays with young children are just facing all the same challenges you face at home, but without any of the home comforts. I have never heard anything more accurate in my life.
At home, when your toddler wakes at 5am, you have a routine. You have the kitchen. You have CBeebies. You have toys they know, a garden they can go in, a house they can move around in without waking anyone. On holiday, you have a dark hotel room, a sleeping partner, no kitchen, no familiar distractions, and about two and a half hours until anything in the outside world opens. The pool is locked. The restaurant is shut. The sun might not even be up yet. And your child does not care about any of this. They are awake, they are loud, and they want to do things.
This is one of the most common and least talked about parts of travelling with babies and toddlers. Everyone writes about surviving the flight. Nobody writes about what to do between 5am and 7:30am in a hotel room in Tenerife with a one-year-old who thinks it's playtime.
So here's everything that actually works. Not just how to get through it, but how to make those early hours into something you might, eventually, look back on and smile about.
If You're Reading This at 5am
Pack a snack bag the night before. Pocket food from the buffet. Fill a thermos with hot water. Put something soft on the balcony floor. Make paper aeroplanes and fly them off the balcony. Run a warm bath and let them play. Try dry erase markers on the bathroom mirror. Stick painter's tape on the floor and make roads. Crack a glow stick in the dark. Save the sticker book for 5am only. Fold a towel into a balance beam. Build a fort from beach towels and chairs. Head to the hotel play area with snacks. Ask reception what's open. Be the first ones at the pool. Walk to the beach before anyone else gets there. Find a bakery that opens early and make it your daily ritual. Give the morning walk a mission. Have an adventure breakfast picnic somewhere that isn't the room. Look for other early-rising parents and say hello. Take turns with your partner and agree the rota before you go. Put something on the tablet, guilt-free. Pack bulldog clips for the curtains. And remember that breakfast is coming. It always comes.
If you have a bit more time, read on. Every one of those ideas is explained properly below.
Why It Happens (and Why It's Worse on Holiday)
Young children wake early. That's not a holiday-specific problem. But it's bigger on holiday because you can't spread out. At home, one parent takes the baby downstairs. In a hotel room, there is no downstairs.
The time change makes it worse. If you fly from the UK to Spain, Portugal, Greece, or Turkey, you are one or two hours ahead. Your child's body clock doesn't care about the local time. If they normally wake at 6am, they will wake at 4 or 5am local time, and there is very little you can do about that for the first few days. Some children adjust by mid-week. Some don't. Plan for the worst and be pleasantly surprised if it doesn't happen.
The Night Before: Ten Minutes That Change Everything
Most of what makes 5am miserable is being unprepared for it. Ten minutes of prep the night before turns the morning from a scramble into something manageable.
Put a small bag together with everything you need for the first hour: a nappy, wipes, a change of clothes, a sippy cup or bottle (pre-filled if possible), and a couple of snacks that don't need a fridge. Rice cakes, breadsticks, a banana, raisins, those little cereal bar things. Put the bag somewhere you can grab it in the dark without turning a light on or rummaging through a suitcase.
If you are staying somewhere with a buffet, pocket a couple of bread rolls, a yoghurt, and a piece of fruit at dinner. This is your 5:30am breakfast. Nobody is going to judge you for taking food back to your room. And if they do, they don't have a toddler.
Fill a thermos with hot water before bed. Most hotel lobbies have a coffee machine or hot water dispenser that runs all night. If you are bottle-feeding, you can make a bottle at 5am without needing a kettle. If you just need coffee, bring a few instant sachets and you have a hot drink without leaving the room. This one small thing makes a disproportionate difference to how the morning feels.
The Balcony
If your room has a balcony, it becomes the most valuable space in your holiday for the first couple of hours each day. One parent takes the child out, pulls the door mostly shut, and the other parent gets to sleep. Or at least lie there in the quiet, which on day four of a holiday with a toddler is almost the same thing.
But hotel balconies are tiled, and tiled floors and wobbly toddlers are not a great combination. During the day, find something to put down on the balcony floor so it's ready for the next morning. A yoga mat borrowed from the hotel gym. A folded beach towel. A sarong. The spare blanket from the wardrobe. A cheap foam mat from a local shop. Whatever it is, it means your child can sit, crawl, wobble, and topple over (which they will) without you spending the entire time hovering over them waiting for a head-meets-tile disaster.
Once the floor is sorted, the balcony becomes a genuine space to spend time. Bring out the snack bag, a couple of toys, a book. Sit with your coffee. The resort will be completely silent. The pool will be still. Nobody is fighting for sunbeds. Your child will be happy pointing at birds and dropping rice cakes over the edge. It's peaceful in a way that 11am by the pool never manages to be.
If you can get hold of some paper from reception the night before, make a few paper aeroplanes together. Fly them off the balcony. At that hour, there is nobody below to hit. Watch them sail down into the garden or the pool area, then head downstairs together to find them and see whose went furthest. Silly, free, and the kind of thing a three-year-old will want to do every single morning for the rest of the holiday.
Things You Can Do in the Room
The balcony won't work every morning, and not every room has one. Here are things that work inside the room, quietly, in low light, while your partner sleeps.
A warm bath. Run a shallow bath and let them play in it. Hotel cups, flannels, a flannel folded into a boat, whatever you can find. Bath crayons pack flat, weigh nothing, and let them draw on the tiles. Twenty minutes in a warm bath at 5:30am is entertainment, warmth, and sensory play in one, and the bathroom door means nobody else has to be awake for it.
The washing up game. Fill the bathroom sink with warm water and a tiny bit of soap. Give them a flannel, a couple of hotel cups, a toothbrush, anything waterproof. Let them "wash" things. Toddlers will do this for a genuinely baffling amount of time. The mess is contained, it's quiet, and it keeps them completely focused.
Dry erase markers on the bathroom mirror. Pack one or two washable markers. Let them draw on the mirror. This feels exciting and slightly forbidden, which is exactly why they'll do it happily for fifteen minutes. Wipes off with a damp cloth in seconds.
Painter's tape on the floor. A single roll of painter's tape weighs nothing and packs flat. Stick it on the floor to make roads for toy cars, a grid for them to step on, or just let them peel it off and stick it back on again. Peeling tape is, for reasons nobody fully understands, one of the most absorbing activities available to a toddler.
A glow stick. Crack a glow stick in a dark room at 5am and watch your child's face. It's magic to them. It also gives you just enough light to find the snack bag without turning on the overhead light and waking everyone. Costs a pound, weighs nothing, buys you ten minutes of genuine wonder.
Sticker books. Cheap reusable sticker books that only come out at 5am. If this is a "special early morning activity" that doesn't exist at any other time of day, it keeps its novelty for the whole trip.
The towel balance beam. Fold a bath towel lengthways on the floor and challenge them to walk along it without stepping off. Zero equipment, uses hotel supplies, and toddlers find this weirdly compelling. Add a pillow "stepping stone" at the end and you have an obstacle course.
Beach stuff as toys. If you've brought a bucket and spade back to the room, or collected shells during the day, you already have a sorting game. Shells in a bucket, biggest to smallest. Sand toys on the bed become a pretend picnic. Beach towels draped over chairs become a fort. An empty water bottle with a few small stones dropped in becomes a shaker. You are not trying to win any awards here. You are trying to fill half an hour with whatever is within arm's reach, and toddlers are remarkably easy to entertain if you lower your expectations of what counts as a toy.
Get Out of the Room
The room-based activities are great for a morning or two. But not for a full week. Definitely not for two weeks. At some point, the best move is to get outside.
This can feel overwhelming. It's dark or barely light. You're in an unfamiliar place. The idea of taking a toddler out into a quiet resort at 5:30am when you don't really know where anything is can feel genuinely daunting, especially the first time. That is completely normal. But here's the thing: once you have done it once, it feels so much less scary the next morning. And the morning after that, it becomes your routine. And by day four, you will look forward to it.
Put them in the buggy or a carrier and walk. It doesn't matter where. Around the hotel grounds, along the path to the pool, through the gardens, out to the road and back. Let them toddle if they're walking. Let them explore. At that hour, there is nobody to disturb and nobody watching.
The Hotel Grounds
Before you venture beyond the hotel, there's often more available inside it than you think.
Ask reception what's actually open early. Some hotel play areas, soft play rooms, games rooms, and adventure playgrounds don't lock at night. Some pools open at 6am or even earlier. The gym might be open from six, and even if you have no interest in exercising, it might have a mat you can borrow for the balcony or a space where your child can safely run around. The reception staff on the early shift have seen plenty of bleary-eyed parents wandering around at dawn. They are usually happy to help.
If the hotel has an outdoor play area, head there. Bring the snack bag and have breakfast on the bench next to the swings at 6am. If there's a grassy area, a courtyard, a car park with no cars in it, anything with open space, let them run. Let them burn off the energy that's been building since they woke up in that dark room forty-five minutes ago.
If the pool is open, be the first ones in. Early morning pool sessions with a toddler are completely different from the manic midday version. The water is calm, there's no splashing from bigger kids, you have the whole thing to yourselves. For babies, the quiet and the still water can actually make for a better, less overwhelming swim than the middle of the day. You'll have your pick of sunbeds afterwards, too, which never happens at 11am.
Head Outside the Hotel
If your hotel is near a beach, a town, or any kind of built-up area, the options expand further.
Walk down to the seafront. Beaches at 6am are a completely different place from beaches at midday. The sand is cool, the sea is calm, there is nobody else there. Bring a bucket and spade and let them dig. Build something. Paddle. Collect shells. Point at boats. You will not get this version of the beach later in the day when it's packed and the sun is at full strength. This is the quiet, golden-light version that belongs entirely to you.
Look for a cafe or bakery that opens early. In tourist areas, especially in Spain, Portugal, and Greece, there are often bakeries that open at 6 or 6:30am to serve the fishing boats and the market traders. A coffee for you, a warm pastry for the little one, a wobbly table outside in the early light. It easily fills an hour, and by the time you walk back to the hotel, the breakfast buffet is open and the rest of the world is waking up. If you find a good one, it becomes your place. Your table. Your order. A little daily ritual that gives the early mornings a shape, something to look forward to rather than something to endure.
Even just a short walk around the local streets can be enough. Give the walk a purpose, however small. "Let's see if we can find three cats." "Let's count the blue doors." "Let's find where the bread delivery van goes." Toddlers are wired to explore, and giving a walk a mission, even a daft one, transforms it from a desperate trudge into something they're excited about. You can build it up the night before: "Tomorrow morning, we're going on a special early adventure before anyone else wakes up." Children love feeling like they're in on something exclusive.
The Adventure Breakfast
Instead of sitting in the room waiting for the buffet to open, take the snack bag somewhere and make a picnic out of it. On the beach. On a bench by the harbour. On a blanket on the hotel lawn. On the floor of the play area.
For a toddler, eating a banana on a beach at 6am is infinitely more exciting than eating a banana in a hotel room. Same food. Completely different experience. And when the buffet does open, you can have a second breakfast together as a family, unhurried, because nobody is starving and nobody is desperate.
Make Friends
Here is something nobody tells you about the 5am wake-up: you are not the only one going through it. Every family resort has parents doing the same thing at the same time. The dad pushing a buggy around the grounds at 6am. The mum on a bench near the play area with a coffee and a thousand-yard stare. The couple doing laps of the pool terrace with a baby in a carrier.
These are your people.
If your child makes a friend during the day, which toddlers do constantly and without any of the awkwardness that adults bring to it, talk to their parents. Make a casual, no-pressure plan to meet at the play area the next morning. Nothing formal. Just "we'll probably be down by the swings around six if you're up." The kids entertain each other. You get to talk to another adult who understands exactly what you're going through. The morning stops feeling like a solo endurance test and starts feeling like a social event.
Some of the best friendships parents make on holiday happen in exactly these moments. Two families, both exhausted, both up before dawn with children who refuse to be reasoned with, bonding over the shared absurdity of it all. You might swap numbers. You might not. Either way, it makes the mornings better.
Take Turns
Both parents do not need to be awake at 5am every day. Take it in turns. One parent does the early shift today, the other does it tomorrow. The off-duty parent sleeps until breakfast opens, then you regroup and start the day together.
Agree this before you go. Be specific. "I'll do Monday, Wednesday, Friday. You do Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Sunday we'll figure out." A lot of couples don't agree this in advance, and what happens instead is that both parents wake up, both lie there in the dark feeling tired and resentful, and nobody gets any rest. Protect each other's sleep. It is the most valuable currency of the holiday.
Screens Are Fine
Downloaded episodes of Bluey or Hey Duggee on a tablet at 5am, screen brightness low, volume low or headphones if they're old enough. Twenty minutes of quiet watching while you lie next to them with your eyes closed is twenty minutes of rest you wouldn't otherwise get.
Every parent on that resort is doing the same thing. This is not the moment to feel guilty about screen time.
Think About the Room Before You Book
A lot of this gets easier or harder depending on what you book.
A room with a balcony is worth the extra money. Not for the view, but for 5am. A poolside or garden-facing room means the balcony has things to look at and is worth being on, rather than overlooking a car park.
A suite or apartment with a separate living area is the single best upgrade you can make when travelling with a young child. You can put them to bed in the bedroom and still have a room to sit in. At 5am, you can take them into the living space without waking your partner. If your budget allows it, this is worth more than an extra star on the hotel.
A ground floor room with direct access to the garden or pool area means you can step outside without navigating lifts and corridors with a buggy in the dark.
If none of those are options, at minimum request a room away from the lifts and main building, and check that the curtains actually close properly. Hotel curtains that don't quite meet in the middle let a strip of light in at sunrise that acts as an alarm clock for small children. Pack a couple of bulldog clips or large binder clips to pinch the curtains shut. They take up no space in your suitcase and can genuinely buy you an extra forty-five minutes of sleep.
The Bigger Picture
These mornings don't last forever. In a couple of years, your kids will sleep until seven and you'll be the one awake early, sitting on a balcony in total silence with a coffee, and you'll think: actually, this is lovely.
And somewhere in the back of your mind you'll remember those 5am mornings. The two of you on the balcony watching the sky change colour. The paper aeroplanes sailing down into the empty pool area. The walk to the bakery when the streets were still cool and quiet. Your toddler's face lit up by a glow stick in a dark hotel room. The other family you met at the swings at six in the morning who became friends for the rest of the holiday.
In the moment, these mornings can feel exhausting and relentless and like the opposite of a break. But they're also some of the most uninterrupted, undistracted time you'll spend with your child. No phone notifications. No to-do list. No other people. Just you, them, and a morning that belongs to nobody else.
Try to take a few mental photos. Or actual ones. The light at that hour is beautiful and your child's face in it is worth remembering.