Longer before almost 2.5year old will settle at night

[Sabine]

I am at my wits end

My almost 2.5yo is great except for bed time.  Up until the last few months, he was going to bed at 745 asleep by 830 and up by 630 napping 2hrs in the afternoon.

Now, he stalls before bed, "I need to pee, I need water etc".  He keeps call ing for us to come in DH and I.  It takes him longer and longer to actually fall asleep and sometimes it isn't until 9 ior 930 that he falls asleep and w/u is still 630 and then he's cranky +++.

I hate to limit naps when he's so bearish but I usually let him sleep (2-2.5hrs) which adds to the problem. 

I have tried to limit naps to 1.5hrs but bedtime is still long and drawn out and then he is even more overitired!!

Please help.

[Layla]

Well to be honest I think he's stalling at bedtime because he is not tired enough... so my 1st guess would be to limit nap to at least 1.5hrs. I know not all toddlers are the same but my 33mo dd has been taking longer to fall asleep at night & since she was 2.5yo she has not been napping everyday & if she does nap its only about an hour. She will then do 10.5hrs at night.

Something else that might help is to name parts of your routine... & with every step closer to bedtime remind him that "after books we're singing songs, potty & then to bed... is there anything you want/need"... ie water/pee! Then after you read books... again repeat that you are going to sing songs & then potty & bed. Again ask him if there is anything he wants/needs. After songs tell him he can use the potty for the last time & then bed... etc...

With water you can give him a sippy and next to bed/cot so that he doesn't use that as an excuse. With potty you could try to limit drinks before bedtime?

So it could that he is just testing limits so in that case try to be clear with your routine (like naming every step). Some have had success with charts... that is drawing steps of the routine so that its clear to the toddler what's next & that bedtime is coming up. Or it could be that the long nap is getting in the way of him being genuinly tired around the time you want him to go to bed

hth & let me know how you go
Layla

[Claire Anne]

We had to drop naps to get over this. He did get overtired and was not always easy even then but once he adjusted to it, he was so much better. But the bedtime may have to get earlier also to cope with the shorter or missing nap. Sometimes DS will fall asleep in the car at 6pm and I can put him straight to bed when we get home - we won't hear from him (MOST of the time!) then until about 6.30 the following morning. I would say it is an indication that the naps are too long so maybe if you even make them 45 mins and bring bedtime forward, that might work. That's what worked for us anyway but it that last nap is the hardest to drop or shorten.

[Mom to M&M]

If you've seen my post right here (about my 2 1/4 yo) we are having some similar problems. When DD DOES nap she's so hard to wake and would sleep so long but I too think I need to limit nap to 1.5 hours tops. Perhaps less as even then she's not falling asleep for at least 45 minutes at night. So hard to figure out...

Plus it's hard to physically tire her out as much after her nap as it's getting quite cold here and dark so early (sunset at 4:30) so we can't do our normal afternoon park runs or long walks so easily. And since we live in a smaller apartment (for now - moving in 1.5 months) we really needed that!

[Sabine]

thanks for all the tips..i'll try solidifying routine with him and limiting naps to 1.5hours and see how it goes.
i'll keep you posted.

[Lilah'sMommy]

Just wanted to say that we had the very same pattern starting around the same age.  I had to limit naps to 1.5 hours, which helped with, but did not eliminate the bedtime stalling.  Really, the bedtime stalling is developmentally normal behavior at this age whether or not the child is tried, but if they're not sufficiently tired, it's worse.

Right now my 3.25-year-old still naps most days, but her nap has become later and later and her bedtime is shifting, too.  I'm persisting with naps because 1) I need the break and 2) her night-time sleep is much sounder (albeit shorter) if she does nap.  As a result, her bedime is much later-- in bed at 8:45 but she's not asleep until somewhere between 9 and 9:30 most night, with a wake-up at 7:45.  I have a feeling that we have another 3 months tops before naps are a thing of the past, but in the meantime I'm persisting.  A 3-year-old only needs about 12 hours of sleep (a 2.5-year-old about 12.5-13), so with a 1.5 hour nap and a 10.5-hour night, she's right where she should be.

Being very clear about the bedtime routine does help.  What also helped us tremendously was actually making the bedtime routine longer, as it now takes her longer to wind down for sleep.  From bath to bedtime, the routine for my DD1 is now about an hour, with books, cuddles in bed with story-telling in the dark, and listening to music together while we cuddle.  We leave the music on for her when we go.  That sounds really long, but it's much better than fighting with her about staying in bed for an hour at night!

It will get better!  When I think back to when DD1 was 2.5 (and we then had a 2-month-old, too), I remember how torturous bedtime was.  It's now a breeze.