If you’re a parent of a young child, you’re probably no stranger to waking up in the middle of the night to your child calling for “Mommy!” from his bedroom. If you’re lucky, it’s simply a bad dream, a stuffy nose or some other legitimate reason that has disturbed your sleep.

If you have a preschooler like mine, however, you have a child born without the ability to discern between critical and non-critical reasons to wake you up at 5 a.m. For me, justifiable reasons to rouse a sleep-deprived mother from slumber include a preschooler’s bodily functions or, perhaps, flames.

Yes, I’ll willingly respond to “Mommy, I peed!” or “Mommy, I barfed!” However, the problem is that Max does NOT say “Mommy, I peed” or state his situation upfront. Instead, he just calls out “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” till I come. So each time it’s like Russian roulette: Sometimes I stumble in to find him the victim of the stomach flu; other times, he just wants to know where I put his ukulele.

This week alone, my early riser called me into his room at 5:30 a.m. to happily announce: “Mommy! I found a sparkle on the floor!” “Mommy! Can we make ice pops today?” “Mommy! I’d like a motorcycle for my birthday.”

Each time this happens, I painstakingly remind him what constitutes a legitimate reason to wake me up. If you pee in your bed, yes, you can wake up Mommy. If you just want to tell me you love cookies, you have to wait till Mommy — and the sun — is up. But as I toss back to sleep in frustration, I can’t help but think of many years from now, when those cries for “Mommy!” in the middle of the night may come by phone instead of from the other room . . . when his worries and fears will be much more serious than wondering if we can make ice pops tomorrow.

So I guess in some warped way, through my shortened sleep cycles and lost slumber now and then, I should be grateful that the reason he is calling for his mom today is not for something grave, but simply to show her a little sequin that brightened his morning . . . What’s your 5 a.m. wake-up call?