GroClock Review

When The Gro Company contacted me to review their GroClock I was over the moon. I love their products having previously used others such as the Gro-Egg Room Thermometer when Lily was a baby. As you can tell by my other post we have just recently converted Lily’s cotbed into a big girl’s bed. Without hesitation the first thing on my list was going to be a GroClock as I had heard such positive things about them online, so when The Gro Company offered me the chance to review one it was perfect timing.

Unlike some children, Lily has never slept with a nightlight on in her nursery so when I first used the GroClock I opted to dim the screen down to its lowest level. There are 10 stages of brightness for the moon phase of the clock ranging from 0-10, with 0 being completely off and 10 being the brightest. I set Lily’s clock to 1 (the dimmest setting without actually being off) as I thought I would try firstly with it on so that she could easily relate to the blue moon still being ‘awake’ at night if she ever woke up and it would remind her to wait for the yellow sun. Unfortunately though, as I initially suspected, she complained one night of the clock being ‘too bright’ (she’s used to sleeping in total darkness so any source of light is a distraction for her). Thankfully though as previously mentioned, the blue moon can be switched off at night which means that the clock only lights up when the yellow sun wakes up to signify that it’s morning time.

What's in the box...

This has worked great for Lily as because she doesn’t have any nightlights, sleeps with blackout blinds AND blackout curtains, it’s impossible to tell when it is daytime. So without disrupting her usual sleep routine, the clock’s screen can remain off until the morning when the sun wakes up. Lily then excitedly shouts at the top of her voice “It’s yellow! It’s yellow! It’s morning time!” The moon still plays an important role in signifying night time for Lily as even though we have ours switched off, when you set the clock for bedtime the animation begins as it transitions from the sun to the moon. The moon is then displayed briefly before fading out until it disappears completely.

The clock has different settings for both bedtime and nap time. So you can set both a morning wake up time and a nap time wake up time if required. It also comes with an audible alarm for when the sun rises which will become useful for when Lily is older and needs to be awake for nursery etc. As mentioned earlier, the brightness of the screen can be adjusted for night or switched completely off if your child prefers. There is also a button lock on the clock to prevent your child from fiddling with the settings or prematurely waking the sun up! Thankfully Lily doesn’t seem interested in playing with it and it is sat high up out of her reach anyway so we’ve not had to rely on the button lock... yet.

Lily pretending to be asleep!

Each night before bed we say goodnight to the sun before switching the clock over and watching the animation begin (see the picture below showing the transition from sun to moon). The clock also comes with a short story which features the GroClock’s principle behind a good night’s sleep, achieved by sleeping all night until the sun comes up in the morning, and it triggers the parents to switch over to night mode during the story. It helps Lily to understand the purpose behind the clock and relate to the story.

The GroClock's animations when it is bedtime

I have definitely found an improvement with Lily’s wake up time. She's always been an early riser and would usually rise anywhere between 5:30 & 6:00am. I started off by initially setting the clock to her usual 6:00am wake up time as I thought it would be a little unfair to make her wait too long for the sun in case she woke up early! At first she woke up at her usual time around 5:45am and I could hear her shouting me from her bed. I went in and explained that the sun hasn’t risen yet so we need to wait for him to wake up. I left her in her bed for another 15 minutes and she waited patiently before literally jumping for joy at the sight of the yellow sun! Bless her. Every few nights I have been slowly creeping back the time that the sun rises by a quarter of an hour to something a little more... reasonable! It is working a treat so far and she now ‘wakes up’ consistently at 6:30am and 7am on the weekends which is such an improvement. Before she would just shout for me or James once she was awake until we came in her room and we would then have difficulty explaining that it was still sleep time. But now, thanks to the GroClock, Lily will either wake up at the correct time, wake up early but go back to sleep because she knows it is still night time, or wait patiently for the yellow sun to appear. The end result is still the same for mummy and daddy though... a greatly appreciated lie in!

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