For about 4 weeks now, my ds has been staying awake until 9:30pm every night! you can almost set your watch to it... We've been doing the wind-down and putting him to bed around 8 or 8:30 (we've tried adjusting this but doesn't seem to matter). He will play in his room until 9:30 and then get into his bed and go to sleep. Sometimes he cries and we have to go in and tuck him in again, sometimes he is ok by himself. A few nights we had to give him a cup of milk and then he settled right away (still around the 9:30 mark.) He just doesn't seem ready to sleep until that time. Most mornings, i have to wake him at 7:30am.
the logical answer to me, is to shorten his naptime. He currently sleeps about 2 hours, from 12:30 to 2:30 or 2:45. i think if he napped only until 2pm or so, this would help.
Here's the problem...we've talked to the daycare (he goes Mon-Fri) about adjusting his nap. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot they can do... because of the ratio of cargivers to toddlers, they have certain rules in place... there is a 2 hour nap period where the lo's must stay on their cots (not a problem for most of them, as they sleep the full 2 hours.) but it makes it difficult to have them wake him early. It's hard to keep a 20 month old on his cot after waking him, without him disturbing the other kids. So the best they could suggest is that he would be one of the last ones that they would put down, so his nap will start a bit later (maybe 12:45) although his wakeup time would be the same. This helps a bit sometimes, some days they do this he goes to bed at 9pm. I still think this is too late for him to be going to bed.
Any suggestions? i'm going to talk to them again at the daycare and see if there are any other options as far as adjusting his nap. in the meantime, is there anything else i can do? i don't really want to wake him earlier, 7:30 works really well for us...