Class 12 daughter has copied a topper's 4.30 am routine from YouTube

olive_chai_71373 Sept 2026

For about ten days my daughter has been getting up at 4.30 to study, because a board topper she follows on YouTube says that's what made the difference for him. She still goes to bed at 11. By evening she's dozing over her books, and her class teacher mentioned that she fell asleep in a free period. I'm a family doctor. I know exactly what I'd say to a patient. Saying it to my own daughter is another matter, anything from me lands as a lecture. Has anyone dealt with a borrowed routine like this? How did you get them to drop it without turning it into a fight?

2 comments

quiet_pool_74884 Sept 2026
Something similar happened here over the summer, when my son copied a cricketer's fitness routine he had seen online. Arguing about the routine got nowhere. What worked was asking him to keep a simple log for a week: hours slept, and how he felt by afternoon. He dropped it himself once he saw his own numbers. Would she agree to something like that, or would even that feel like a lecture?
- olive_chai_71374 Sept 2026
  She might, if it comes across as an experiment rather than me proving a point. She does like data. I'll suggest it tonight. Heard the 4.30 alarm again this morning, so the timing is right.
silver_piano_7984 Sept 2026
I would look at the topper's whole day, not just the alarm. My son showed me a similar video once. The person woke at 4.30, but also slept at 9 and had no school commute, because the video was made after the exams. The clip only shows the impressive part. If she watches it again with that in mind, she may see the wake-up time was never the point.