What is the 'ideal' amount of awake time for a 14 month old?

[Schae]

My son is 14 months old and is transitioning to one nap a day. On some days he has two naps (1hr each) other days he has one nap (also only 1hr) and on he!!ish days he has no nap.
We have tried putting him down for his nap earlier and later, but we just can't seem to get it right.
He wakes for the day at between 6am and 7am and goes to bed for the night at 8pm (we have tried getting him down at 7pm, but he stays awake till 8pm and then promptly drops off, so we've concluded that 8pm is the right time for him).

Should he be awake for 6 hours and then try the nap? He'll show tired signs from around hour 4, but WON'T go down.

Any advice?
TIA!

[imsmum]

When I was transitioning Margot I reviewed the sticky on toddler schedules on this board to get a sense of a good interval between wake up and nap and from nap to bedtime.   I think the "ideal" schedule that Tracy has set out is 6 hours between w/u (7am) and nap (1pm) and 4.5 to 5 between nap w/u and bed/sleep.  That assumes a 2 hour nap and 11 hour night sleep.  Obviously if your little one is not sleeping for those lengths then the wake time is going to be longer and how you divide that time up before or after the nap depends I think on what your lo's particular sensitivities are.  With my dd she would wake at night if she went down to sleep at night any later than 5 hours after her naptime wakeup but she always took her nap and it didn't really matter how long she was awake in the morning before it.  So for her even when she was waking early (5 or 5:30)she would go down for her nap at 12:30 until 2 (we were only getting 1.5 hour naps then) and would be asleep by 7:30.  It sounds like your lo may be the opposite and is sensitive to nap times.  You may not be able to go "cold turkey" then on the one nap.  In BW Solves All you rProblems Tracy sets out a technique to transition to the one nap that you might want to try.  It basically involves pushing the morning nap back 15 to 30 minutes every 3 days and continuing with a short pm nap for part of the transition. It may be that he needs to be ASLEEP already at the 4 hour mark--I think Tracy says in one of her books that with toddlers when they show tired signs they are in fact already overtired! I would try starting wind down after 3.75 hours and then start pushing it back to 4 , 4.25 etc.

Just a s a side note the 8 pm bedtime could just be a "crash time" if your lo is overtired so especially on days with one one hour nap or no naps I would try to get him down super early--even 6:30ish.

[Tammy: Ethan & Kaden's Mom]

Hi Schae - good to "see" you around!

I just transitioned Ethan to one nap a day.  When he was supposed to be on two naps, I'd get a 1 hr 15 min am nap, and either a very very short pm nap, or none at all!  I tried pushing back his morning naptime, but wasn't having much success.  So, I decided it was time to stretch him to one nap.  Ethan usually wakes in the morning about 6:30 - 7 am, and I've been putting him down for his nap at 12:30.  We've had a lot of success with this time (about 5.5 to 6 hours after wakeup), and he's been taking great 2 or 2.5 hour naps.  This is a miracle for him, because he's always been a short napper!!!  He's been waking up around 2:30 or 3 pm from his nap, and then he goes down for bedtime around 7 - 7:30. 

You might try a weekend of pushing him to one nap after lunchtime to see how he does... I tried 11:30 am at first(with lunchtime at 11), but had greater success with 12:30.  But they are all different!

Hope this helps even a tiny bit!

[momofnewbaby]

Hi there,

Just wanted to add my two cents too. We transitioned our dd to one nap recently too. One of the things I was advised about was the transition takes time to settle in, in that it can take upto a couple of months for them to finally figure out a time, and take a full two hour nap. My dd took slightly over two months, and only this week has been sleeping for close to two hours, although it was only one hour 15 minutes before. So, if I thought she was getting tired, I would give her a catnap around 4:30 or so, so she can be in bed at 7:30. Now, her schedule is wake up 6:30, nap from 12:15-2:15, and bedtime between 7:15-7:30.

I would just advise you to stick with the transition, even though it might not seem like its getting anywhere on some days. Give your lo a catnap if required, and it'll happen.

Good luck,

Sumita

[Schae]

Thank you so much for the suggestions!
I'd really become slack about wake up time and hours awake because Luka was so firmly in his previous routine, you have all given me a wake up call. THANKS!
We will begin tomorrow (as I am at home).



ps
Hi Tammy! Nice to see you too I check up on you guys every now and then.

[mom2william]

I am reading this post with interest as my DS is almost 13 months and we may be very soon transitioning to 1 nap.  I do have a question for Sumita, though.  When you said you gave your DD a "catnap" around 4:30pm, how long did you let her sleep to be able to still have bedtime at 7:30?  Was it like 45 min.?  I just wondered so I can know what to do on days we only have one short nap early in the day and he refuses sleep at the regular afternoon naptime.

Thanks!

Suzanne
___________
William born 3/23/05

[momofnewbaby]

Hi Suzanne,

Ya, her catnap was sometimes 30, sometimes 40 minutes, but I never had to wake her up. She almost always did it by herself. But, looks like I jinxed myself the other day when I said she was taking close to 2 hour naps this week. Well, thats all out the window and we're back to 1.15 hours. Just going with the flow. Sorry to rant.

HTH,

Sumita

[mom2william]

Thanks, Sumita.  It's getting a little confusing to say the least with naps at our house.  I'm also very indecisive and can't ever decide whether to limit DS's nap to 1 hour in the morning or let him sleep at least an hour and a half.  He almost always wants to sleep longer in the AM, it's the PM nap he doesn't always fall asleep for easily.  If he does fall asleep for the PM nap, it's getting later and later like 3:30 sometimes!  Today he slept about 1 hr. 15 min. in the AM (I did wake him up because we had to go to a playgroup).  He was up from 10:45am until he FINALLY fell asleep at 3:00pm.  I put him down for the PM nap at 2:20pm or so but he must not have been tired??  He took about 45 min. to fall asleep and then slept 2 hours!!!!  I woke him at 5:00pm and he went to sleep easily for bedtime.  I am really confused about what to do.  I would like to keep the 2 nap scenario a month or so more if possible. 

Hope your DD's naps start to go back to 2 hours.  Those 2 hours are lovely when you can get them! 

Suzanne
____________
William born 3/23/05

[bheemeryck]

Hi Mom2William,
I've been following your thread about your son's naps, my ds sounds a lot like yours, he loves his morning nap and often refuses or falls asleep really late in the afternoon. I am going to start transitioning him tomorrow, I have a three day weekend and hopefully that will give me enough time to get a sort of routine for the dayhome on Monday!! We decided (i think) to do the gradual method, his current naptime is anywhere from 9:30-10:00 am depending on waketime (6:30-7:00 am) and he will sleep up to three hours some days in the morning!! I just don't know where to move him to, should I keep him up until 10:30, let him sleep 45 minutes-1hour, then try to get him down by 3:00? If he sleeps past 4:00 pm he tends to stay awake until 8:00 pm, which is getting too late. Maybe we should go cold turkey... I miss the last routine already. Any advice or thoughts?

Keep me posted on how your transition goes, it's nice to hear someone else is in the same boat!!

[imsmum]

I would try to push the nap back 15 to 30 minutes at a time since he loves his morning nap a bug leap may get him too overtired to  nap for long.  Since he is taking a nice 3 hour nap you want to keep this--just push it backk slowly.

[mom2william]

Hi Becky,

Just saw your post today!  I haven't really done anything with trying to transition my DS yet to the one nap a day scenario.  I have tried limiting the AM nap to 1 hour like you were thinking about doing but it really doesn't help.  He still will go down way late, like 3:30pm!!     Take yesterday.  He went to sleep around 9:20am.  I got him up at 10:30am because we had to go to church.  He acted tired (yawned, etc.) around the 2-3 hour mark after getting up from this nap.  But, we put him down around 1:40pm and he WOULD NOT go to sleep until 3:15pm!!!!   Ugh!  He only slept an hour, though, so it didn't affect bedtime.  I don't know what to do.  He goes to sleep so easily for that AM nap so I am thinking about trying to push it forward to 10:30-11:00am at first and see how it goes.  I have to wait until we have a few days to ourselves with no where to go so I can try and accomplish this.  Unfortunately, though, my DS doesn't always sleep as long as your DS in the AM.  Somedays he wakes himself up after 1 hr. 15min. and still won't take the PM nap!

I am also very interested in how it's going with your DS so let me know! 

Suzanne
__________
William born 3/23/05

[bheemeryck]

HI Suzanne,
Well, our big plan for the weekend did not go exactly as I had planned... Alex started coming down with a cold so I didn't want to mess him up a whole bunch!! I did decide instead of cutting the morning nap short, I would just start to move it back in 15-30 minute increments... he doesn't sleep 3 hours everyday so on the days he sleeps 1.5-2 hours that still gives us enough time to sneak in a catnap around 3:30 or so. He used to catnap around dinner time for the longest time when he was still doing three naps, so I guess it's not a whole lot different than that!! So, we abandoned the 'lets do it now' plan, I'll just keep going with the flow, I guess there will be days when he doesn't sleep in the afternoon, but eventually we'll be able to get one nap going. I realized he's actually been staying up later on his own in the mornings, I just need to pay attention to wether he's actually tired or not instead of saying, okay, it's 10:00, naptime.... Good luck with your lo, keep in touch!!