Look over my EASY?

[afranklin]

Dear friends,
My LO is 22mos. I've never ever ever had a successful EASY. I'm doing set nap, give or take 15 and set BT give or take 30m. I'm thinking of really not doing the flexible thing anymore, unless he's sick or headshaking or waking up an hour earlier than planned... stuff like that. I think the flexibility might actually be not helpful most of the time.

I'm sort of giving up, hopefully in a freeing way. I just want to check in that the routine I'm attempting is a reasonable routine. The routines around this age in 'What does toddler day...' and Sample EASYs vary A LOT, so it's hard for me to tell if there's some magic bullet in there that I'm not getting. And I'm absolutely abysmal at determining if he's OT or UT.

So here it is:
7 wake
12:45 in bed for nap, wake at 3p
7:30 in bed. He almost always takes 30m to sleep.
8S

Is this a routine I can follow and just relax that it's the best I can do, and he has to do the rest?? I appreciate any thoughts.
Amanda

[trimbler]

Hi Amanda, I know how you feel, it does seem so much simpler when they're on set timings! This should be achievable at 22mo, we certainly did set timings from when our DS started with his childminder at 11mo, although we would always adjust BT if he'd had a bad nap. However by 2yo or thereabouts, we wouldn't bring it forward by very much on a bad nap day, half an hour max, usually only 15mins though, that just worked for us.

You're probably still coming out of the 18mo sleep regression, right? We found the key to this was to realise a jump in A times and work with that. As you note, it's very hard to say what is a good routine for a 22mo as they are all so different. Yours looks quite reasonable to me, I would suggest you go with it for a week or so and just see how he responds. I would also suggest increasing that last A time to BT a little if it takes him half an hour to get to sleep, unless you really do know that it will always take that long no matter what you do - but you may be surprised! Note that this could either be keeping the same nap length and a later BT, or by capping the nap, say to 2h (note you don't have to cap to 2h when it's only one nap, but eventually you will probably have to start capping), and actually probably then keep the same A time to BT, but he'll be more tired as he had the shorter nap. On the question of nap capping vs later BT, we found at this age that he needed at least 10.5h at night otherwise he was too tired the next morning, however as he got older he is optimum night sleep increased. You will see how it is for your DS over time...

So give it a go but you'll still need to be ready to adjust your fixed timings if something's not working, use his response to figure out what that change should be, and by all means post on here so we can all put our heads together with you

Btw I could never tell OT or UT by this age, I'd have to look at his behaviour over the course of the day to figure out how to change the set times. Hope you're able to relax more soon, I remember this age was so confusing for me!

[jessmum46]

Moving you to sleeping for toddlers x

[AMJ]

Hi Amanda.

we've been on set times for a while now, and although its not prefect it is soooooooo much easier and I feel that i have my piece of mind back.  Our set times are very close to yours.

wu varies greatly, mostly 6:15, but lately it's been 5:45ish. 
crib at 12;30 for the nap
crib at 7:30 for bt and asleep by 8.

with regards to flexibility of +/-15m for nap, and 30min for BT, for us that didn't work much. If DD wakes really early then I would offer her nap only max of 10m earlier. I found that if I offered it 15m earlier then she would take longer to fall asleep and end up falling asleep at the usual time or later but 10m earlier does the trick for some reason.
For BT I allow 10/15m early (not 30) for the same reason.

hope that help