why will my 6 mos old...

[bcmom]

...put himself to sleep at bedtime and back to sleep when he wakes in the night but not at naptimes? 

At bedtime, he goes down by himself but forget about it at naptime.  There is way too much crying.  At first I thought he must be overtired and tried putting him down earlier.  Well, we are in a horrible short nap phase and guess what, when he wakes up early from a nap, he doesn't put himself back to sleep.  So I think he needs a longer A time.  Sometimes he will put himself back to sleep and more often I can rock him back to sleep.

Just wondering why he can do it at night and not during the day??

Thanks!
K

[katemom]

Can you post your schedule?  How short are the naps, and how long are the A times?  It wasn't too long ago that we had problems like that around here, so I'll try to help if I can,

katemom

[malialeanne]

Hi there. Day and night sleep are controlled by different parts of the brain--for night, melatonin and his natural circadian rhythm give him a much stronger drive to sleep. During the daytime, babies' drive to sleep is not as strong and many times they just don't feel like going back to sleep after a short nap--they've already had a bit of sleep and in their minds, they're ready to get up and play!

For us, overtiredness never really results in short naps--it's generally undertiredness. They are almost always caused by a too-short A time (and occasionally factors like teething or crawling). When dd has a too-short nap, I know that her routine needs tweaking.

HTH.