20 month old.........schedule tweak and GW?

[slbalcome]

Hi,

My little guy is 20 months old, and is currently taking a looooooong time to settle for sleep.  Here is our daily routine.


8:00 am - wake
12:30 - 1:30 pm - nap
7:30 pm - bath, brush teeth, watch tractor video, then lay down in bed (he isn't in crib anymore) around 8:00 pm
He doesn't fall asleep until sometime between 9:00 and 10:00 pm, and he requires me or his dad (mostly me) laying in the bed with him.  He doesn't cry, he just rolls around and chatters to me and himself and tries to engage me.

He has always been hard to read in terms of tired signals.................there aren't any.  Something is telling me that he may be getting OT, which is why he is finding it hard to settle, but I really don't know.  It could just be that having me in there is stimulating, but he doesn't know how to get to sleep without me there anymore.

Any suggestions?

[*Becky*]

Hi there,
I would try having him in bed for 6.45/ 7pm and see if it makes any difference. I agree he could be OT as he is doing a long afternoon on just an hours nap.

[clairebear79]

Def try that first.  Is he waking from his nap naturally after 1hr or are you waking him?

If the earlier BT doesn't help then I would suggest the next thing you try is to push his nap later.  He is only doing 4.5hrs A time in the AM & that's really short for his age.  It may be why he is messing around in the evenings for so long, because he is UT at naptime, so sleeps a short nap, then is either still UT at bedtime or is OT from too long an A time.  At 20 months my DS jumped to a 6hr A time before his nap.  This is a lot more than your DS is doing, so I wouldn't push him quite that far, but perhaps increase to 5hrs A i.e. 1pm nap as a starting point.

HTH.x

[slbalcome]

Thanks ladies.

I will try pushing his nap to 1:00 pm and making sure he gets in bed by 7:30 instead of 8:00 pm.  Will update after a few days of trying that.