Review: Gro Clock from The Gro Company – Mummascribbles

Having been fans of The Gro Company since Zach was a small baby, I jumped at the chance of reviewing one of their Gro Clocks. I’ve heard all about them and a friend of mine had recently posted on Facebook about how wonderful they are. Zach was also going through a stage of waking up early and whilst during the week that’s fine as we both work, we really, really wanted something to help us get a lay in at the weekend!

About the clock

The Gro Clock is designed to help children know when it’s time to wake up. It has set stages: when it’s not in use, it simply shows the time which is great for older children learning to tell the digital time.

When it’s time to go to bed, you select the night-time setting, the screen darkens and it then has a faceful of stars round the edge of a giant star.

When the morning comes (whichever time you’ve set the clock to), the screen turns yellow and shows a big smiling sunshine.

If your child wakes up at 5am and the clock is not set to show the sun until 8am, they can see that it is still night-time and that they should go back to sleep. Throughout the night, the stars go out one by one which helps them if they do wake up as they can see how close they are to it being morning. The clock has two setting options for either nap-time and bedtime or weekday/weekend timings. The clock comes with a fun bedtime book which helps to encourage children to stay in bed longer and it also has an alarm that can be set for older children having to get up for school! It is mains powered and suitable from two years of age.

What we think of the Gro Clock
I wasn’t really sure when the best time to introduce the clock to Zach really was. I wanted him to be used to it so that we could get lie in’s over the Christmas break so we set it up shortly before the holidays and kept telling him about the stars and the sun to get the purpose of it into his head. At the start of the holidays, he decided that he wanted extra sleep anyway and so the sun was always on when he woke up. Towards the end of the holidays he’s been ill and all sleep patterns go out of the window then!

He wasn’t hugely bothered about it at the beginning which I sort of expected. Over the last couple of weeks of using it, he has started to understand it more and it is now a part of his little bedtime routine. When we take him upstairs to bed, he says to us, turn the stars on! He is starting to understand the sun part of it and so I’m hoping that we have brought it into use at the perfect time. We are back to work on Monday and so will have the weekday/weekend settings in use and hopefully we can have some lovely weekend lie ins.

Sadly, Zach is always a bit upset when he wakes up in the night and so we tend to have to go in and see to him but I hope with time, he becomes a bit calmer and falls back to sleep without the need for us and that’s when the clock will really come into play. I definitely think that it takes a little while for them to understand exactly what the clock is about and so I wouldn’t expect miracles to happen overnight with your newly two year old but if it’s used every day, it shouldn’t take long for them to get used to it.

Is there anything we don’t like?
Errrm, honestly, no. They’ve pretty much thought of everything with this product. I just asked the other half if there is anything negative he can think of and his response was that it would be cool for it to have an alarm on it – which it does, he just didn’t know! That was all he could come up with and it was already factored into the clock! It’s also really easy to set up which is a big bonus!

The Gro Clock retails for £29.99 at The Gro Company although is currently on sale for £24.99 (as of 2nd January 2015).

Disclaimer
We were sent the Gro Clock for the purpose of this review but all opinions and words are my own.