27 month old - time to drop the nap?

[mommyOfX]

Hi everyone!

I need some advice here.   My son is 27 months old and I think it may be time to drop his nap but sometimes he still seems to need it, other times not so much.  I'm not sure what to do.  He wakes around 8-8:30 am.  I'll put him down for a nap at 2:30 pm; sometimes he falls asleep in 1/2 hour and other times, not for an hour or more.  Regardless, I wake him at 4:30 pm.  He goes down for bed then at 8:45 pm and rolls around, kicking and thumping until 10 pm sometimes.  This past weekend, it was Thanksgiving here, so he didn't get his nap while we were at Grandma's and when we got home, he was cranky around 7:30 pm, and he went down and out like a light at 8 pm.

So....should I let him nap during the day for less time?  Maybe just an hour?  I don't want a cranky baby before bedtime, but I also don't want him rolling around for hours.  Although he is not complaining.  Today I tried waking him up a little earlier and he was really hard to wake up.

Any suggestions would be really appreciated.

[Samuel's mum]

I'm going through the exact same thing at the moment. The nap seems to be dropping. He's had it 2 out of the last 5 days. And before that missed about 3 days over a month.
Our day looks like this:
Up 7.15 ish
Nap anytime from 11.00 for a max of about an hour and a half. If he's not interested by 12.30 then I stop trying.
On nap days - asleep 8.00-8.15
On non-nap days - 7.00 -7.15.

I'm no expert but your ds has quite a late nap compared to most of the 2 year olds I know (most of my friends are up and about by 2.30 at the latest) so that might be affecting whether he's tired at night. But he gets up later too so I can see why he's not tired until then .
I would suggest you give him a bit less time - perhaps an hour - and work towards the earlier bedtime.

[tylersmommy]

We've been going through this off and on for a looooong time. Tyler will have a few days in a row where he naps well and falls asleep quickly at night, then a few days where it goes all wacky. Since I never know what he'll need that particular day, I put him down for his nap at the same time each day. If he naps, we do wake him (we're still tinkering with how long to let him sleep, I'm thinking no more than 1 hr might be about right). If he doesn't, then he has quiet time up in his room reading books or talking to himself. I plan to stick with quiet time as long as humanly possible...even on days that he doesn't need a nap, I've found that he still needs some quiet time alone to recharge.

Like Emma said, you might think about waking your LO from his nap earlier...4:30 is pretty late. This is how our day looks:
730 - wake
1 - nap/quiet time
3 - wake (if he slept)
830 - bed (nap days...if no nap, 730)

[xxkaty23xx]

Mikey stopped having regular naps at around 20mo. Since then, on certain days (like after weve been swimming) he will be tired by lunchtime and he will either sleep on the sofa or go up to bed for a quick nap. Hes quite good, he doesnt fight sleep but i think thats because i give him his own space and he decides if he needs a nap or not so he doesnt feel like hes being told to have one. He seems to fall asleep easier on a night too without a nap, but he isnt over tired iykwim, if you think he's ready to drop the nap then just give it a go xx

[imsmum]

Looking at your schedule it just seems a bit skewed forward but otherwise is fine.  It looks like you have about 6 to 6.5 hours before nap then a 2 hour nap, night sleep time is up to 5.5 hours after that, and he gets 10 to 10.5 hours at night.  That is exactly my 26 month old's schedule--she seems to be alternating between 10 hour night, 2 hour nap days and 10.5 hour night, 1.5 hour nap days.My dd's schedule is just 1.5 hours ahead of your lo's, with wakeup at 6-6:30, nap at 11 and night time sleep around 8. 

So I think that you have a few options--1)either keep things as they are and just don't put him down so early at night because it is too early given his overall schedule, 2)  try moving his whole day forward in 15 minute increments ie. both nap and bedtime or 3) try shortening his nap to 1.5 hours and see if he'll fall asleep 30 minutes earlier at night, or 4) try moving his nap 30 minutes earlier to see if that changes the length of nap and/or the time he falls asleep at night. 

[mommyOfX]

Thanks for all the suggestions!

I had to wake him at 4 pm today because we were starting an art class, so he slept for about 1 hour 15 minutes.  He went to bed around 8:15 pm and fell asleep a little after 9.  So...maybe if he slept for only an hour, he'll be okay.

tylersmommy, how do you handle quiet time?  Right now, Xavier is still in his crib.  If he doesn't sleep, he'll just roll around for a couple hours.  I wouldn't mind giving him a few books to read, etc., but if I do, then he won't sleep.  Do you give him books/toys when you realize that he's not tired, or is he in a bed and can climb out?

[tylersmommy]

When Tyler was still in a crib, he had 1 book, a teddy bear, and a blanket. If he didn't nap, he'd just roll around in there like you said. As long as he wasn't crying, I left him to it. Now Tyler's in a bed so if I didn't leave books in there, he'd probably end up swinging from the curtains. Since he's always had books in his crib or bed and he's used to it, he just read them until he falls asleep (if he does). If you think that books would be a distraction and your LO is happy enough to just roll around in the crib, then there's no need for them!