LittleHippo Mella: Ready to Rise Children's Sleep Trainer, Night Light, Sound Machine and OK to Wake Alarm Clock for Toddlers and Kids - Arctic Blue

As a mom of a child with autism, one of my biggest fears was my son getting up in the middle of the night and leaving the house! He is almost 4 so out grew his crib and his bed rails didnt last too long until he can climb out. He gets up so quietly so baby monitor didnt wake me up, lock on door just seemed to make him scared, etc. I got this! Showed him how it worked- He LOVES the happy face. First night and he follows it. He stays in bed quietly until the light turns green and the "happy face" comes on. Then he knows I will come get him and he patiently waits for me! I've been able to remove the door handles lock and the bed railing!! Of course I am still cautious but this is amazing for him! I was about to look into a cubby bed!

Short version: We are very happy with this purchase and would highly recommend this product. We use it as intended for bedtime and “quiet time” (independent play in bedroom instead of nap time) for our three year old. Mella boasts many useful features and is easy to set up. Once you train your child on Mella’s cues, this product could give you back hours of sleep.Want more info? Read on. :)———-Update (April 2024, after 3.5 years): Mella has continued working great! The product is still so helpful with our oldest child and now our middle child, who shares a room with our oldest. We have a child with high functioning autism, and Mella has been a lifesaver with that child’s anxiety regarding bedtime issues (when to stay in bed, wake up, get up, etc.). Mella is a staple in our home, and we’re going to buy another for our youngest child’s room now. I still highly recommend Mella!———Original Review:As expected, we needed to teach our child how to respond to Mella’s cues, but once he understood that and we reinforced our expectations through reward and consequence, our son stopped waking us up at ridiculously early hours in the morning. Training our pretty stubborn and resistant-to-change son to use Mella took around three weeks or so, but it has been so worth it. In addition to waking later, he has mostly stopped the middle of the night wakes, which is great! Mella is also such a nice clock to keep him in his room for his post-lunch quiet time. It works like a charm! In order for the transition to go smoothly, we started the Mella wake time close to the time he was already waking and then slowly and incrementally made that time later to our desired wake time. After that, we taught our son about the “play time” feature which automatically turns on for thirty minutes before the green light, if you select that feature.Our son went from waking us around 5:30 AM to now waking at 7:00 with Mella and then playing quietly and independently in his room until 7:30 AM. AAAND because we use the setting with a quiet light cue (turns green), sometimes our son is so busy that he doesn’t even notice and keeps playing, allowing us even more extra sleep (or extra time with baby).We recently were away from home and didn’t bring Mella, and boy, did we regret it! We didn’t realize how often our son wakes at night, but looks at Mella and goes back to sleep. It gives him security and fosters independence through the “okay to wake” cues. Without Mella, he runs to us in the dead of night desperately asking if it is morning time yet (can’t rely on daylight because of our latitude and gloomy climate). We will be buying an extra cord (since we affixed the provided cord to the wall for safety) so we can bring Mella with us on trips. You can buy an extra cord on LittleHippo’s website for around $7 after shipping.All of the features are very useful and set up is intuitive. You can choose from quite a few nightlight colors, and the set colors that Mella uses are yellow for play time and green for “okay to wake/leave room.” We personally use red at night because it is a more sleep-friendly color and we can say, “red means stay in bed.” Mella has both audible and visual (green light) alarms (you can select either), various sound machine-type white noise sounds, and nap time features, as well as a child lock. Our son would easily switch off the lock though, so we just put Mella out of reach.Our son loves that “Mella” (we call it by its product name) has a face and a personality of sorts. Mella is happy when awake, playful during playtime, and asleep during bedtime. It is an endearing little clock that our son loves. We plan on using it for years to come and changing the settings as our son’s needs change. Maybe he’ll eventually need an alarm to wake him up?It is important to note that although this clock comes with batteries, they are only present to save your settings in the case of the clock losing its power supply (power outage or unplugged). Because of all the features it boasts, Mella needs to be plugged in at all times to work. I found this was the case in the majority of “okay to wake” clocks. Because our son is very curious and will not leave electronics alone, we placed Mella on a floating shelf and covered the cord with a cord protector (see pics).We have no complaints about this clock, and are so thankful that it exists. Our only suggestion would be that LittleHippo consider making a wall mounted clock that can run on rechargeable batteries (charge via USB-type cable). It could attach to the wall via magnets so it’s easy to take down and recharge every couple/few days. Perhaps it could have a simpler design so that it doesn’t use as much energy to run?Thank you, LittleHippo, for such a quality product! You’ve made our lives so much easier. :)

Before I dive into it, I want to clarify that many points of this review will be specifically about Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD.) However, there are some points that apply to individuals who are not autistic or have SPD.I bought the MELLA Ready to Rise Children's Sleep Trainer for my 3.5-year old autistic daughter. I do not have the problem that many other parents seem to have with children about my daughter's age as she usually stays in bed playing on her own until someone comes to get her. We're very fortunate in that sense. The main purpose for which I bought this product is because I want my daughter to learn to be more independent.That statement takes me to the main feature that made me choose this product over other similar ones. Any parent of an autistic child will attest to the fact that our children do not understand the concept of time or having to wait for something. I have seen some reviews in here saying that they rather not have the clock go from sleep mode to play mode and then wake mode. Those parents wanted to override the play mode, going straight from sleep mode to wake mode. If that's what you want for your child, then this product is not for you as it does not allow you to turn the play mode off. Those parents would be better off buying a product like the Mirari OK to Wake! or the Toddler Stay-In-Bed light clock, or any other similar product.I almost bought the OK to Wake! clock because my daughter's therapists say that product is the most popular among their patients. However, from my experience as the mother of an autistic child, I do not want my child sitting in bed for hours, or worse going into some autistic meltdown or getting out of bed because they have been waiting for a long time for the light in her clock to turn on. I like the transition from no light or from night light to yellow for play time and then green for wake mode. My daughter, as well as a lot of non-verbal autistic children, already understands the correlation between red = stop, yellow = wait, and green = go. The MELLA clock offers precisely that. (Side note: It does not have a red light, but it does have a strong pink / purple.)CON: You cannot change the play time mode from its 30-minute setting. I would have liked to be able to set it to 15 minutes, instead. Thirty minutes seems way too long of a time for my daughter to be sitting or playing in bed waiting for it to change to green. I would have liked to have that option.Another reason why I bought this product is because I liked that it offered night light and sleep machine. You are basically getting a 3-in-1 product. At the time of buying this product, I was using a clock, one of those sound animals you could buy at Babies R Us, an old cell phone with a sleep app, a night light, and a humidifier with a star projector. I wanted to stop having to use so many things. Unfortunately, the sleep sound machine is very loud.CON: Sound machine volume cannot be changed. For a child with SPD, this can be a problem. I muffle the sound with an old sock. I shouldn't have to. But that's the only way I found to get around this problem.Now to the night light. PRO: Five different colours to pick from. And I love all five options. CON: Too bright. All of them. The amber option is the only one that is mild enough. I wish there would be a way to dim them, like you do the clock face, which comes with 5 different levels of brightness. This is a PRO for me, by the way. But I would have liked to have that option for the rim that works as night light and for the play and wake modes.I have not tried to use the alarm, yet. There's no need with my child. She tends to wake up pretty much around the same time and without assistance. So I will refrain from making any comments about this feature.A lot of people have complained about it being difficult to set up because the buttoms are on the bottom of the clock or for any other reason. This is actually a good thing for me as it prevents little hands from touching things by accident. There's also a lock button that blocks all setting options when turned to locked, but does not interfere with the alarm, night light, or wake modes. The user manual is very clear. I did not have any problems figuring out how to set it up, which I did mostly on my own without the assistance of the user manual. I did refer to the user manual to figure our the wake mode and night light. But the rest was very straight forward.My last comment might be a bit picky; however, I'm going to mention it anyway. I bought the Bright Purple model. The pictures on Amazon showed it to be more like a lavander, at least on my screens. I was surprised when I opened the package to find that it was a deep purple, more like violet. But I don't care. I can live with that.So autism, SPD, or not, to summarize,PROS: Size (about the size of a big apple.) - Five variety of colours for night light - Sound machine - Goes from no light (or night light) to yellow to green, which is perfect for many children to understand that they still have to wait a bit longer to get out of bed - Seems sturdy enough - Clock face is very clear and simple to understand - Dimming option for clock face.CONS: Too loud as a sound machine - No option to change the volume for the sound machine - Night light and play/wake mode ring can be too bright for some individuals - No ability to dim the rim - No option to just turn the wake mode off for weekends (you basically have to set the whole thing off and reprogram comes Sunday night. If you don't care about waking up at the same time on weekends, then this doesn't affect you. But my family usually doesn't get up at the same time over weekends and this implies one more step for us to take care of on Friday night. But we can live with it.)I'm abstaining of giving an opinion about the alarm as we are not using it.Overall, I would recommend this product to other parents and I have not regretted buying it. I just wish that it would allow me to further customize it to my needs, especially considering that it's not a really inexpensive product. Give these options and I will change my review to 5 stars.

Cute, easy to use toddler wake clock.Our adapter brick stopped working after 1 year, but the Little Hippo team was helpful in resolving the issue and is sending a replacement brick.I would overall recommend this product and their service. The clock was great for indicating wake time to our toddler. I like that the light can be completely off at night and the display can be dimmed as we don't need it as a nightlight.My only feedback regarding appearance would be that I wish the ring of light was a warmer color tone.

My girls love this clock, and the waves. It helps relax and lull them to bed (ages 2-7). The costumer service is AMAZING! A year later we had problems, and the team helped problem solve the issue, and sent a new part to fix it. We love this company and clock!