Toddler sleep question

[monkeyblonde]

My son (nearly 17 months) normally sleeps from about 9-11am, but then he struggles to nap in the afternoon meaning that he is shattered by about 5. He then goes to bed about 6.45 and wakes up around 4.45, every morning! Has anyone played with their LO's naps to make the whole thing work better? And how do we start?

[TheTravellingLemon]

Tricky. I think I would start by moving the morning nap forward a bit with the aim of getting g to about 11am. You might find that you are not getting a full night's sleep out of him because he's overtired by the time he goes to bed.

[monkeyblonde]

He gets sooo tired and grumpy in the morning though as he has been up early. I guess if I try and move it by 15 mins each day.... The problem is trying to work it all with preschool drop offs and collections for my older son!

[TheTravellingLemon]

Yeah, that's how I would approach it too. It hard and I don't really know, but I think if he is less tired at bed time you might get a longer sleep out of him at night. It is tough if you need to be out at those times though.

[NickyEds]

We found ds was waking early from around 12-13 months so made the transition to one afternoon nap. It might be much harder with other dc but we just had a couple of weeks of ridiculously busy, grumpy mornings. I did every bloody toddler group in the area, lots of singing (cheerfully! in the street!) and playing all in the name of "getting through" to lunch. He had very early lunches, at 11 then gradually later until he he was napping in the afternoon (only just at first) and his night time sleep adjusted so he now naps at 12.30-1 ish to 3, goes to bed at 7.30 then sleeps until 6.30-7am. It was an exhausting couple of weeks but totally worth it as the 5am wakings were a bugger.
It's cyclical isn't it? They wake early, so need to nap early, so need to go to bed early, so wake early.....and so on

[toomuchtooold]

In Supernanny's book she recommends a nap at 10 and then one at about 4.30-5 for toddlers that age - I never tried it but it would probably have worked for mine as one of them really struggled to get to lunchtime when they dropped the morning nap (twins).

If he's not getting a second nap at all now I would try and push that morning nap later. Then just see what happens with his morning wake up time - like lemon says, he might be overtired and if the later nap sorts him out he might just sleep longer. At that age mine slept from about 7.30pm till 7am and had a 2 hour nap in the afternoon (ducks to avoid large rocks now being thrown by parents of non-napping children).

[monkeyblonde]

4.20am start this morning, anything has got to be worth a go!

[NickyEds]

Good grief! 4.20! That's brutal. Keep him up as long as you can this morning to push his nap forward. Is the weather nice where you are? Can you get him out?