3.5 yr old, early wakings, nap refusal

[Freckles1981]

My son is 3.5 and has been refusing his daytime nap for the past month, which isn’t a problem in itself, but he’s back to waking up early again (5.30 / 6am).

How do we combat this?

Currently, if he’s really groggy I will drive him for a bit and he’ll take a short nap or we’ll have an hours quiet time. We’ve moved bedtime earlier and he’s usually be asleep by 7 / 7.30pm.

He will still have the odd nap at preschool but it’s been limited from 1.5 hrs to 45 mins as we were getting bedtime resistance. On these days, he’s asleep by 8pm, and waking at about 6.30am.

Do we need to tweak anything? Is there anything we can do to stop the early wake ups?

Thank you

[Haribo2012]

Hi if it’s a no nap day what time is BT after the EW?

[Freckles1981]

Hi, if he hasn’t had a nap, he will be asleep by 7pm. We start bedtime at 6pm, but it takes him a good 20/30 minutes to unwind (he’s always been this way even though we have calm time in the hour leading to bedtime routine)

[Haribo2012]

I think really on the no nap days it could be worth trying to move the BT 15/30 mins earlier it’s quite often the case that their days need to be 11.5/12 hours long.

If he does nap I’d prob suggest no longer than 20 mins....as that for us and I know others doesn’t interfere with BT too much.

Do you feel like he gets better quality night sleep with no nap?