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.

Good, but could use some enhancements. We purchased this clock because our 3.5 year old was waking up yelling for us as soon as the sun came up. That's 5:30 am where we are at which means no bueno. The pros include the look and useability of the clock, color and noise choices. Works as it states, and we've had no issue with set up. We do feel some features were definitely missed. The idea of controlling it from your phone is better than doing it on the clock itself because despite having a "lock" feature, a 3 year old can easily figure out how to unlock it. You can set up when night time is, but you have to manually set the color and noise each night. Would be nice to have those two settings automatically begin when nighttime is set, or at least give the option. Not a fan of the yellow color before the green time to wake color so would be nice to turn that off, but you can't. All in all, does what we wanted to do as our 3 year old now yells for us when her clock turns green, but definitely could use some additional features to make this worth the money.

This is a cute clock, but as far as a sleep trainer, it has only helped us so much. As many times as I've said "If Mella is still sleeping, you go back to bed" my daughter still is getting up in the middle of the night. It has however reinforced her bed time, as she gets very excited to see if Mella is asleep yet. So that is a help. I also found the sounds to basically sound the same, white noise, and too loud. Light is ok, but we stopped because my daughter said it's too bright (even on Amber which they recommend). This may work for the right child, but for us, I'm not sure it was worth it.

UPDATE: The very kind and attentive people at LittleHippo reached out to me after this review and wanted to make it right...she explained they stand behind their satisfaction guarantee, and they did! I am so impressed by their proactive customer service! The company really cares about the customer and the quality of the product. Thanks to LittleHippo for taking the time to address my concerns and going above and beyond to make sure our family is happy :)

This clock is a genius idea and more importantly, it actually WORKS! Some of the things we love about it:

-- Ok to wake function - you can set a sleep time on it so it doesn't just tell your kid when it's ok to wake up but also when it's time to sleep too. Provides a good visual cue if your kid wakes up in the middle of the night
-- Back up battery - it doesn't run on battery but at least it saves the settings if I need to unplug it. I moved it once and it was convenient.
-- Good design - This wasn't in the manual but every minute or so, the clock actually blinks! I didn't notice but my son did, and he thinks it's the cutest thing.
-- Night light - He loves changing color every night - they have a lot of colors to choose from (although the green wake up light is the same).

If I were to change anything, I would add more sleep sound options. Otherwise, it's a solid 5 star product.

I'm using Mella only for their sleep/wake up light and it's working great!! My twin daughters now stay in their bedroom until the green light appears. Before they would go into my bedroom or call me when they woke up at around 6am (many times much earlier), now they are sleeping until later (I guess and added benefit as they were waiting for the yellow light to turn on) and if they are awake when the yellow light turns on they play or just wait in their beds, and as soon as the light turns green they are out of their bedroom. It's been amazing for us! I haven't used their night lights or sounds so I can't say anything about them. Oh, and Mella is super cute! My kids loved her as soon as they saw her and thought she was a little robot! I searched for other wake up lights and most of them were ugly or had a blue light on for the night (and blue light is not good for sleeping, makes your brain think it's daytime! Red or Amber would work best). I wish it only had different wake up times like for the week and weekend, but oh well, as it is I'm very happy with it.