3 yo falling asleep very late..

[*niki*]

Hi !
I need some advise on how to improve DS's bedtime.

Here's the background info..  He's never been a good sleeper and until 6 months ago, still had NW and a dummy.  He improved a lot when we moved him to share DD1's bedroom (his became the new baby's room) and the last dummy was lost and never replaced.  Bedtime for DD1 and him is between 7h30-8PM after usual routine : bath, PJ, story.  He used to fall asleep within 20-30 min.  Now this has stretched and stretched.. sometimes he's not even asleep by 9h30-10PM (I am !) Most of that time he is happy, chatting with himself or cuddly toy.. but he can also get up numerous times, throw tantrums, etc...In the mean time DD is fast asleep right beside !  He'll always wake up around 6h30-7 regardless of how late he fell asleep.

We've tried to keep him up longer, but it just ends up in a later tantrum, refusing to go back to bed. I know my older daughter started to go to bed later at this age too, until she started school.. but i feel he's not getting enough sleep and would like all 3 kids to go to bed around the same time.  He still naps once - from 12h30 to 2 PM approx. 

Should i try to cut down / remove nap ?  any other suggestion ?

[Lindsay27]

Yes I would definitely say it's probably time for the nap to go if it is having that much of an effect on BT, my DS was the exact same.  You don't necessarily deep to drop it completely but I would definitely start capping it for sure.  Maybe try pushing it to 1pm and cap it to 1hr and see what that does, and if BT doesn't move forward then cap it some more.  For many it's a gradual process and a lot of trial and error.

[*niki*]

thanks for the advice.  We tried no nap - just went cold turkey -  this weekend and it went fine.  He wasn't too cranky by the end of the day and fell asleep by 8-8h15 : 30 min after we put him to bed.  Much better !

Unfortunately, daycare won't help.. they say all kids take a 2h nap regardless of their age and will not do an exception.. that was my first discussion with them about it (and normally really like and agree with their approach).. so i'll try again in a few days and discuss with the person in charge if needed...

So.. as expected, last night he took 2hours to go down, tried to get up twice and ended up in me being angry and him crying for 20 minutes.  Tonight, he's still up as i'm writing this.. so not much better

[Lindsay27]

I would just try to talk to your daycare about it - our daycare was the same in that the Preschool room that DS was in had a mandatory nap/rest period, but I was able to get them to cap his nap to 1hr.  At the very least if they do that it should help somewhat.  Eventually he was moved to the "school-age" room where naps were not mandatory.

[*niki*]

I wanted to see how this weekend goes without naps before bringing it up again but so far so good.. on 1 occasion DS fell asleep for 20 min as we were in the car at around 5PM.  Bedtime has been much easier.. he still tries to get up or play for a bit, but i think it's just because he's so used to it.. he fell asleep within 30 minutes each night.

I'll try to make an arrangement with daycare because he still has 2 years to go there before school.. so there's no way i'm fighting bedtime for 2 more years !