is 2.5yo ready to drop nap completely?

[heidiruthie]

i've done a bit of reading on this site about dropping the last nap, but how do you know if your lo is ready or not? a lot of moms seem to find that if they stick with it, even when their lo is refusing his nap, eventually he'll start napping again.

my concern is that ds1 isn't getting enough sleep when he doesn't nap. he sleeps 10 hours at night (8pm-6am) and used to have a 2 hour nap....until he stopped taking them last week. he took one yesterday, but today it was a royal tearfest for an hour until we finally gave in and allowed him up to play. with only 10 hours of sleep all day (when he should be getting more like 12 hours) he is a BEAR! just completely irrational, emotional, just a mess. and the "quiet time" in his room doesn't work because he is anything but quiet! plus the baby's room is right across the hall from his.

we did try putting him to bed an hour early one evening and that just caused him to wake up an hour early, at 5am!!

please help!!!

[becky1969]

What time do you usually offer nap?

[RACHPEM]

We are having same sort of problems over here, Maya just makes it to 6am, previously she was doing 1.5 nap , bt at 7.30 and wakes ups 4.50-5.30 never any more than 10 hrs, so we cut nap bak to 1hr and we have had more 6am wake ups which means 10.5 hrs at night and occasionally we will get 11hrs, we have been on this new schedule for 2 weeks now but she does always seem pretty tired so i hope we have done the right thing and dont spiral into OT.  Maya is a similar age to Tristian, but we have always struggled with EW and shorter nts.

[heidiruthie]

rachpem: we have ALWAYS struggled with ew (used to be 4:30-5am!) as well and sleep has just always been an issue for my touchy little boy. yesterday he didn't nap and actually wasn't as much of a bear, we did put him to bed at 6pm and he was up at 5am this morning!

becky: if he wakes up before 6am, his nap is usually around 11:30am. if he wakes up past 6 (which is rare) we may make an exception and put him down around noon.

i'm dreading today's "nap" because even if i tell him "stay in your room for 30 min. and if you can't sleep then mommy will come get you", he doesn't understand the concept of 30 minutes yet and cries the whole time. breaks my heart

[becky1969]

It may be time to move nap later rather than eliminate it.  When my son was a little over 2 he started REALLY fighting naps.  I thought maybe he was going to give them up too.  But then I accidentally put him down for nap an hour later than normal (due to errands etc.) and voila! Back to 2-3 hour naps!  It was a timing issue!

EWs are 90% of the time caused by an OT bub at bedtime.  If he's taking a nap at 11:30 and wakes at 1 pm then that's 7 hours until an 8 pm bedtime! WAY too long since you're really only giving him about 5-6 hours A before nap.  You may have a kiddo like mine who needs MUCH less A before bed or else he's OT (I've got a textbook-touchy).  At my house I finally discovered at around 2.5 that anything more than 4 hours A time and he'd have a shorter night.  4 hours and I was getting 12-12.5 hours out of him whereas before that only 10-11. 

Long story short: move nap 30-60 mnutes later for 3 days and see how that works.  Also, make bedtime earlier, preferably 4.5-5 hours MAX from end of nap.  And if that doesn't solve EWs then I might go as short as 4 hours A before bed as that is what worked for my son until he turned 3.5 (now he does 4.5).

[heidiruthie]

thanks for your reply, i will try that today. i'm hoping he will be falling apart from exhaustion by nap time, since he had the earliest EW ever!! 3:30am!!!! cried every time we left his room, so finally, at a loss, brought him into bed with us. 30 min of squirming later, he was heading downstairs to watch cartoons.  i'll let you know how today works out, though i've no idea what his naptime should be!

[heidiruthie]

update: found out later that he and dh slept on the couch from 4:30-6:00am. so i put him down for his nap at 2pm...he got out twice, but i could tell he was super tired, so gently tucked him back in and....he slept till 3:45!! so tonight i'll be sure to have him in bed by 7:45 and crossing my fingers that he'll sleep a bit more tonight. thanks for the advice, so far so good!

[elf]

We  have had the same problem the past week.  DD is 28 months and up until a week ago was doing 7pm - 6am/6.30am with a 2 hour nap.  She has now learned to hop out of her bed which she didn't do for 9 weeks and we have had 3 days (not all in a row) of no nap and a tantrum in the middle of the night with her saying, 'I'm awake'  and crying (though completely shattered!).  Yesterday she fell asleep for her nap on the bedroom floor as I sat in  her room against the door refusing to leave until she slept - it was awful but she needed it!  I can't help but think that our problem is a power struggle though as we have a 5 week old baby and she is doing other attention seeking behaviour as well.  Bedtime last night was 7pm and she got out of her bed this morning at 4.45am - walked to our room, I put her back then she got out again and we ignored her and told her we were sleeping.  She played with her toys (not quite sure how she could see very well!) and at 6am she bought me her dressing gown and slippers and asked for them so we got up and started the day.  have no idea now when to give her nap?  Am I missing something here?  Do you think this is related to our new baby?  Can she dramatically change her sleep needs this quickly?  Her behaviour is not pleasant on lack of sleep to say the least!!!  Also, she kept her 2 naps on and off til around 18 months and has never had sleep issues.  She has been an angel sleeper since birth so I am at a loss here as to what to do.  Not to mention tired with feeding a baby during the night as well!  Could it be separation anxiety?  I don't work, she doesn't go to day care and I didn't even spend one night in hospital with ds - came home the next day and bathed her that night so it's not like she hasn't had me around.  I have bathed her and put her to bed every night since ds born so she is definitely getting my time, though obviously not as much...  Sorry to high jack, but was going to write exactly the same as you so thought I would tag along!!!  Any advice would be greatly appreciated

[heidiruthie]

hi elf! no worries on high jacking, i hope you get some answers!

from what i've read on other threads & the dropping nap support group, its quite often the case that lo's will temporarily drop their nap when a new baby arrives. i was wondering if this was partially to blame in our case as well, though ds2 is already 15 weeks old. i would have done the same as you did, staying in her room till she fell asleep on the floor. i've never let my lo cry himself to sleep in his whole life, but i was very close to contemplating it today, just because i knew how much he NEEDED to sleep!! thankfully, it didn't come to that, but boy was he sure tired by 2pm! you may want to try the later nap for a bit, just to make sure she is exhausted by the time you put her to sleep. i don't know for sure, though since i've always been worried about OT being a problem... but i would say this is definitely NOT a dramatic change of sleep needs. those happen gradually, and not in such large increments!

let me know if you find out anything else that is helpful!

-heidi

[elf]

Today she was clearly tired and asked to go to sleep...  I got her ready and put her down and left the room.  She got out of bed straight away so I came in the room with her and lay against the door pretending to go to sleep so she could not get out.  She didn't fight me, she tried to open the door then lay down on the ground and fell asleep.  Once she was asleep I transferred her to her bed and left the room.  She slept 1.30 hours.  Not sure what to do about the terrible early wakings though...  ??

[RACHPEM]

Just wanted to update whats been going on around here, as i mentioned before Maya has always tended to be on the shorter end of sleep and we also did months of 4.30 wakings Heidi so i know how you feel.  However since we have shortened Mayas nap to 1 hr and Bt at 7.30 most mornings are 6am and this morning 7.20 omg and that was after bed at 7,30 too.  We have been doing this for a few weeks and although it does not always work it is much better than it has been, i know all our lo's are different but Maya does seem to do better with a midday nap and the longer time b4 bed but she is very spirited and needs a huge windown at bt.  She has also been going through a huge SA thing which appears to be quite normal around this age with getting mommy to "do everything" more drink, get lovey, put blanket on blah blah!!! this also seemed to be a big thing when she wakes in the mornig which is generally at 4.50-5.10 however we were quite strict (not crying) but wi/wo and not getting her out of bed til 6am regardless and that combined with less day sleep appears to be working atm but it can always be short lived with maya lol.  just thought id share, xxx

[elf]

Thanks for that info...  We have had another 4.45am waking but she is napping today (without much of a fight).  I have posted another post in the hope that someone might have some advice - maybe for us it is about her finally realising she can hop out of her bed, or that we have a new baby in the house...  Would love to be strict about wi/wo with this but the hard thing is she is actually quite happy and 'awake'!  Also, if she had a tantrum then would no doubt wake our 5 week old baby who I'm trying to get on to a routine...  A tough one and I am at a loss....  The only time we have had funny sleep issues is with the 2-1 nap switch which lasted months!!!

[newmama12]

I haven't read all of the posts here, but saw you said he didn't understand to stay in his room for 30 minutes. Have you tried a timer or alarm clock? There are tons of cute kid ones now that might work for him!

[heidiruthie]

okay, i need HELP!!!! we've had him waking up at 3:30 every morning now, except for the morning after his last nap-he slept from 7pm-4:50am that time, relief for us! he is SO OT and so are we! plus i have a baby to care for....he is currently in his room refusing to nap and both dh and i are ready to pull our hair out! we've tried the later nap time, which worked once but he just doesn't WANT to nap even though he's visibly tired. then we put him to bed at 7 and he's up at 3:30 AHHHH!

is this normal for this transition? do we just have to ride this out for a bit and his night sleep will eventually lengthen? i can deal with it if i know it will get better, but at 3:30am, things look pretty hopeless

quiet time is working a bit better, as he's getting used to it, but it isn't helping with the EWs ...PLEASE HELP US!!!!

[becky1969]

You're getting about a 9-10 hour night which is OT, obviously from the nap refusals!

I just went  thru a length discussion with another mom in a similar situation.  I think part of this is that your son is adjusting to new baby.  Let me see if I can get a link to that discussion and you can try some of the ideas there:

* longer wind down with mommy AND daddy time
* reward chart for staying in bed
* lots of praise for being a big boy
* involvement wiht baby care and lots of praise
* lots of talk about how baby being up at night makes mommy tired and how sleeping big boys make mommy happy.

Gonna go find one or more of those threads for you to peruse! But I think we need to approach this as your son is just trying to find ways to spend MORE time with mommy & daddy just like baby gets too.  Does baby sleep in your room by chance?