Customer Reviews

OK to Wake! Children's Alarm Clock and Nightlight

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I bought this clock for my 2 1/2 year old because she gets up at odd hours and I wanted a visual clue to tell her when it was OK to get up. That part works. However, my 4-year-old son has the "Teach Me Time" clock by this same company, and it offers the same functionality and SO MUCH MORE.

The things wrong with this clock are:
-- No plug-in option, so when the batteries fade so does its usefulness.
-- The nightlight is not very bright and it turns off quickly ... this is true of the Teach Me Time clock, but when plugged in it is not an issue for whatever reason.
-- The time part is not illuminated, so while my daughter can tell it is OK to get up, she can't see what time it is. After being used to her brother's clock, this disappoints both of them.

I only bought this clock because the other one was sold out everywhere. While it does the sleep job, I was overall disappointed and would tell any prospective buyers to go for the other option if available.

Summary: all the functionality is there but I wish the nightlight were brighter. We're going to keep it anyway. Hopefully it's bright enough to help our daughter learn to sleep in a bit longer in the morning.

I was torn between this item and it's plug-in sibling (Teach Me Time). We really wanted something battery operated so this clock seemed the clear choice. The "Ok To Wake" feature is what sold us on this clock. It's too early to tell if the behavior modification piece will work for our daughter, but that's more a question of her learning -- the functionality of the clock is all there. We even plan to use the 'nap' feature as a time-out clock/timer (got the idea from a competing product). We love that it is battery operated -- waiting to see how long the batteries last in practice.

My main concern is that the 'nightlight' is not very bright. Even on "high" the yellow is particularly dim; the green is adequate. We purchased a separate product to serve as a nightlight even before we knew this one was dim. Why do I want it brighter? So that my daughter can easily see what color the clock is, which (in my mind) is the whole point of this particular clock. I'd try to see the clock in person if you think this might be an issue for you. Its brightness will NOT be the same as its plug-in sibling.

The face on this clock is not backlit; you can't see it in the dark without pushing the toe to illuminate it. To conserve battery life the nightlight has a max time on of 2-hours (although you can push the button again to re-trigger it). The controls are quite easy to use. The animations are cute. I like the design of toe-operated buttons (for toggling light and snooze). Overall very child-friendly and fun.

My wish list? The functionality of this clock (or it's sibling) using a rechargeable base, so that you could get the power (and brightness if you wanted it) of a plugged-in version with the flexibility of a cordless (i.e., battery-operated) version.

One other note -- some of the competitors for this product have a money back guarantee (as in if your child doesn't learn to sleep better get a refund). This product (and it's sibling) do not. It'd be a nice thing to add.

Who knew that "sleeping in" and "6:30" would ever be in the same sentence? Yet before we got the OK to Wake clock, my 3-1/2 year old would get up as early as 5:00 a.m. and insist that we get up too. But now, he knows to wait until the green light comes on at 6:30 before he's allowed to come out of his room. Most of the time, he adheres to this; and the few times he doesn't, all I have to do is ask, "Did the green light come on?" He'll sheepishly shake his head and go back to his room.

The nap timer is another great feature. Before this, I would sometimes set an egg timer so he'd know when he could come out. Trouble was, the timer only went up to 1 hour, and he needs a 2-hour nap. The OK to Wake clock, with its programmable nap timer, has solved that problem. (He still occasionally comes out early, complaining that it's taking too long; but it's better than it used to be.)

The only real problem with this clock (for us, at least) is that any time it gets dropped, everything resets. It took me awhile to figure out why it sometimes wasn't working, until I finally saw my son carrying the clock, with the green light all lit up, and then he dropped it and the light went out.

On the whole, I recommend it. But it would definitely be better if they could fix the reset issue.

This clock is perfect for teaching our 3 1/2 year old when it's time to get out of bed. Just what we needed now that she has a little sister in the room with her.

FYI - the default amount of time it stays green is 30 minutes but you can change that so that it will stay green up to 2 hours (or as short as 15 min). It will just shorten your battery life if you set it for longer.

I bought this clock for our 3 year old who recently transitioned to a "big girl bed" and seems to think that it is ok to get out of bed and to come into our room at all odd hours of the night. The problem is that the clock only stays green for 30 mins. So, if you set it for a certain time in the morning and she sleeps 30 mins past that time, it has already turned off and she gets confused, as it isn't green, yet it is light outside, so she knows that she should be able to get out of bed. Yet, it defeats the purpose of setting the rule that she can only get out of bed if it is green. In turn, she has lost faith that it will ever turn green and pretty much ignores the rule in the middle of the night as well. Clearly, this also has to do with stricter parenting :), but I'd prefer that the clock stay green until we turn it off.

This clock is exactly what we needed to teach our two-year-old twins an appropriate time to wake up. We're able to help them sleep in longer in the mornings and stay quiet if they wake up before "the clock turns green," as we taught them. We also use the "OK to Wake" setting for naps, so if they wake up too soon after going down, they know to put themselves back to sleep. They have been less grumpy and more rested since we started using this clock. It was easy to teach and can be adapted when they are able to distinguish numbers on the clock face. This is perfect for our family!

OK to Wake! Children's Alarm Clock and Nightlight This really works well--better than I had thought. We use the ok to wake feature, and the nap timer. Both seem to really work with the kids. We have twin 4.5 year old boys that sleep in different rooms. Prior to this product, it was rare that both would sleep in or sleep very long in naps. One or the other would get up or stay up. Both boys took to this right away. They actually stay in their rooms for the green light, sometimes reading a book or quietly playing until it turns green, allowing us to still sleep. The key was enforcing it the first night (so they know they have to stay in their rooms until it turns green). After that, we have had no problems after a week of nightly and every day nap use. Both of our boys sleep with them in their beds, they love the night light feature. They also seem to have an interest in learning to read the time more. one of our boys decorated his with stickers. This is very well designed, the controls are easy for parents to set, but well concealed and not easily changed by prying 4 year old hands, so you can have confidence they can't turn off the wake feature or change its time. I went in very skeptical this would work with twins, but was very surprised it did. Very much worth the investment.

I want to clear up one issue because I hesitated on buying this clock when a couple reviewers had mentioned that the green light only stays on 30 minutes. If your kid sleeps through that, all is lost. However, 30 mins is just the manufacturer's default - you can program the green light to stay on anywhere from 15 mins to 2 hours. I have it set at 1 hour and that works great for us. I LOVE this clock. 5 stars because it truly is a life changer for me, plus my son is so proud to be independent, using his clock to help him understand when he can get up instead of having to come in and ask us if it's time to wake up yet. Lots of features - regular alarm clock, light-up time, light up duration, brightness adjust, nap timer, etc. It's not intuitive, so just read the manual thoroughly!

We got this clock for our 3 year old about a month ago and it has been working great. He had been waking up around 5am every morning thinking it was time to start the day and just would not go back to sleep. Then he would be cranky and crabby all day long because he was tired! We tried so many things to get him to realize it wasn't time to get up yet. I even put a regular clock in his room with very large numbers and told him it wasn't time to get up until the first number on the clock was a 7. He got that part fine but would still yell for me at 5am to come in and lay with him until his clock said 7. Now that we have this clock, we just tell him if he wakes up before the light is green he can either go back to sleep or read quietly until the clock says it's time to get up. It has worked amazingly! He doesn't scream for me at 5am any more but instead waits until the clock is green and lays in bed yelling "Mommy my clock is green" until I go in to get him. He is excited about it every morning and has even woken up too early several times and gone back to sleep instead of opting to read!

I do have a bit of a problem with the fact that there is no plug in option. The batteries haven't died yet, but I'm waiting for the day when they do. It would be nice to be able to put batteries in it and plug it in so that if the power goes out, the batteries kick in but you're not waiting for the clock to stop working due to a lack of battery life.

However, the real reason I gave this 4 stars instead of 5 is because of a HUGE design flaw in my opinion. The green light is wonderful, and not so bright that it wakes my son up if he's still sleeping when it comes on, BUT it only stays green for a half hour. There have been several times where my son has actually slept through the green light and is incredibly confused when he wakes up and I go into his room to get him even though his light isn't green. Then he is always messed up the next morning because he's afraid he slept through the green light again, even if he didn't. It would be really nice if they had made it so that you turn the green light off yourself, or at least extended it's time to be an hour or more. It's very frustrating when I wake up knowing that he's slept through the time limit and I either have to sneak in to change the wake up time or suffer the consequence of him waking without his green light. Otherwise, this is a great product and has worked very well for us.

This clock is exactly what I needed! My son, who has always been a very good sleeper, started waking too early. We were also having trouble keeping him in bed for naps. This clock was the perfect answer. My 3 year old knows when the clock glows green, he can get up. It's very simple to use, easy to toggle to nap mode and doesn't have any extraneous sounds or lights to interrupt sleep. We keep my son's room very dark, so I didn't want a clock that glowed all night or gave off too much light. I have our clock set to only glow when it's time to wake, which is all I needed. This clock has already been on a trip with us and really helped keep my child in bed and resting, despite being in an unfamiliar place. My son LOVES this clock and so do I!!