2 year old waking and crying

[LizPNI]

My son just turned two this month. He has always been low sleep needs, but now he is waking and crying for me at 5am and also crying for milk. His bedtime is 8pm and don't want to change this because it gives us time to be together and enjoy dinner and bedtime routine since both husband and I work.

He takes a nap at 1pm. No problem going down. He sleeps from 1.5-2 hours. I have been told to cap his nap before, but he is so cranky and miserable if I wake him up. It's awful.

If we start the day at 5am he is so cranky because he didn't get enough sleep. The sun doesn't rise here till 6:15 and we also have a gro clock. I keep telling him he can't call for me until the sun comes up or the clock turns green. It doesn't seem to be working.

Thanks for,your help

[MasynSpencerElliotte]

If he is lsn then the nap would probably need to be capped or the ew will continue. What time did you try to cap it at? I wonder if you caught him in a deep sleep cycle and maybe a bit different time might catch him in a lighter phase of sleep? My two year old is lsn too and she does about 11/11.5 hours total in 24 (all at night, we dropped the nap a couple of months ago) so if your lo is getting 9 at night and 2 hours of naps that makes 11, which could be all he needs.

[LizPNI]

Thank you for the advice on capping the nap.

But  I'm beginning to realize that we might have created another problem with him sleeping in our bed. I've noticed that if he wakes up at 5am hr cries for me and his milk. If one of us goes to him and tells him it's still dark out and the clock hasn't turned green yet he just screams and screams. If we bring him to our bed at 5am he'll try to go back to sleep for a little while and then he just cries for milk and for us to get up. He is very very cranky during this time.

The other night though, my husband went into the room when my son was crying. Thinking it was 5am he brought him into our bed. It was only 1am. My son then slept till 6am with us. Woke up nice and happy and asked for his milk even using please. It was like he was another person. This has happened a few times where he has ended up in our bed in the middle of the night and then he sleeps longer.

This makes me think he really needs that hour. Now to figure out how to get him past 5am on his crib on his own. Prior to our trip in July he used to sleep til then fairly regularly.

Thanks

[*Ali*]

Wake to sleep at 4?

[Buntybear]

Think it is fairly normal when nap capping/dropping for Los to be grumpy when they get woken up! It could be that that longer nap is robbing some of his night sleep now