What's Happening to Naps for my 2 year old?!

[theu.s.lees]

So my son has been doing a big time nap refusal and BT refusal, struggling all around. A few months ago we ended up pushing his naps back a bit and his BT and that really seemed to settle down the EW we had started getting. But  now, he is spending 30-45min in his crib chatting and messing around until he finally falls asleep. Is this normal? Then he isn't napping as long as he used to. I realize that he would eventually shorten his nap, but I'm not ready! Then at BT he used to go down so easily, he may have chatted for a bit, but nothing longer than 15 minutes or so. Now he tosses and turns and cries out numerous times. We thought it was teeth related as he seems to be getting the upper molars, but I don't think so anymore.

His typical day is:
Wu - 7
S - 1:30-3:30/4
BT - 7:3-8

I know that he sleeps more than most kids his age, but he has always had higher sleep needs than kids his age, and done just fine. We did have his nap around 1, but that didn't seem to work. So I moved it back to 1:30 and that was helping. Today it was closer to 2 and he seemed tired but then did the same thing, chatting for 20-30 minutes again. Then when he was napping 3 hours (and we were waking him up usually) he's now waking up around 2 hours.

TIA for any help!

[ZacsMumme]

Its developmental Hun. We had the same thing. I just kept being consistent and tried to change it up a little ie he could take a book to bed, or his fav car he always went to sleep

2 hrs nap should be enough, even for HSN, you am always give him a slightly earlier BT if you need too. Maybe try 2-4? You could try capping 1 day at 1.5 so he is really tired the next day to break the cycle a little bit.

How is his language? We had a boom at 2 it affected sleep a LOT.

[Mummy23boys]

Same here! We had it too! Glad to say its has gotten better but it was a struggle so hugs to you.. DS1 will be 2 in a few months and I do wonder if we need to shorten his nap time slightly soon. But I will hang on as long as I can!;)

Here is my post if you want to read it xx

20 month old sleep questions

[eshea]

Can I jump in here as we're having the same problems?  My LO will be 2 in a few weeks and is suffering from EW and short naps.  For the past 4 days I've moved his BT up to 6:30 and it was helping (he would wake at 6) but today he was back to 5:30 or so.  He only napped for 1 hr yesterday.

I'm scared to move the naptime earlier because I dread a short nap and then a terribly long afternoon, but is that my next step?

His day is usually:
5:30/6 morning
12:45 nap (lately only a little over an hour)
6:30 BT (the new time, used to be 6:45)

[theu.s.lees]

THings are getting worse it seems. Yesterday he completely refused his nap. But the day before he napped fine. We were at my parents yesterday but he naps there usually just fine. I also figured he'd be tired and sleep easily because he was playing so much with the grandparents. It did mean that he slept well last night, which was nice. But he can't drop the nap!

Thanks for the tip on developments. He has started talking a bit more. I'm trying to stick with the set nap time of 1:30 and set BT of 7:30.

Eshea - I found that set naps work the best (it had been recommended to me) and around 1. If your DS usually naps at 12:45, can you try pushing it back to 1:30? What I had found is that M would EW to get a longer A time in the morning before his nap. Once I pushed his naps back (they used to be at noon, and now 1:30), the EW did stop. Then instead of making his BT earlier, you push it back. It was about the same time that M went from a 6:30-6:30 schedule to more of a 7/7:30-7:30 schedule. Sticking with the set times will help things balance out. We started with the later night even though he had an EW, so one morning was really long, but it worked fine.

[ZacsMumme]

Erica - I actually wonder if your LO is OT before the EW what was WU nap and BT?
Neyssa, hugs. Ty sticking with the set times for 3-5 days and if you have to encourage him to take the nap because he needs it I would do that too. We did a lot of if you want to go to the park you need a nap first so you have energy to play.