Do you wake your child from naps?

[kimberlina]

Yesterday DD had a mega nap at lunchtime. DH and I had heated discussion as to whether we should disturb her. The upshot was that she woke up naturally 4 hours later (which is longer than she sleeps as a single stretch most nights).

Do you wake up and if so then after how long?

Desperate for anything to improve our nighttime sleeps

[thestringcheeseincident]

Depends how old they are.
DD2 is 14 months and I wake her or else she would nap for hours in the day and nothing at night. I never let her sleep past 3.30 either so she goes to sleep well at 7pm.

[supadupapupascupa]

noooooooooooooooooooo

NEVER!! enjoy it.

IME it never impacts on night time

[WishIWasRimaHorton]

always have and will continue to do so

[WishIWasRimaHorton]

oh and depends on age of child. but no single sleep of more than 2 - 2.5 hours in the day at any age. by 18 months only max of 2 hours in one nap (only having 1 nap by then). and by 2 no more than an hour (or 90 mins if very early start to the day)

[Grabaspoon]

Children go to bed between 12/1 and regardless of what time they fall asleep I wake them by 3pm.

[RitaMorgan]

Yes, for a couple of reasons.

Have started waking ds after 45/60 minutes in the morning as he would sleep for hours in the morning, have a short afternoon nap and be overtired by bedtime (hoping it might make him sleep in later too). Also he'll be an nursery every morning from September and DP needs him to take a long nap in the afternoon as he works from home.

In the afternoon I wake him by 3.30/4ish so he'll go to bed by 7.30/8ish.

He's 10 months now, since birth I haven't let him sleep more than 3 hours at a time in the day though.

[supadupapupascupa]

woah, I think it must depend on your child OP

Mine has 3hours regularly in an afternoon (about 1-4)

Goes to bed and sleeps right through 7.30 to 7.30

[kimberlina]

Hmmm maybe trial and error then? DD is 7mo.

Might try the 2 1/2 hr max rule and see if that improves nighttime sleeps

[Jaquelinehyde]

DS now 5 had naps up until he was about 3. He would go down just after lunch 12-12.30ish and sometimes didn't wake until 4 but usually he would get a good 2 hours. I never ever woke him.

He went to bed at 7pm every night without fail and slept through the whole night. Napping never affected this. He was a very sleepy child and I loved it

[pastamouse]

Like most people here I would also say depends on the child, but I would think that 4hrs was mega long for a nap!

Personally i'm a nap-waker. Found that too much daytime sleep does impact on DS's night sleep - as did too little. At around 7mnths we were aiming for around 45 mins in the morning, and about 1hr45 in the aft. Would wake after 1hr and 2hrs respectively, occasionally 2.5hrs if am nap went wonky. However this is all said in hindsight and after trial and error! And it rarely went as smoothly as that makes it sound. His sleep was still pretty horrific for a while, but this seemed to lessen the horror iyswim.

Now at 18mnths we are getting a fair proportion of straight throughs and he has one nap of 1hr20-30 and I usually wake him, unless he's been poorly of course. Am often tempted to leave him to see how long I can have calm restored but remember the horror of multiple, often lengthy, night wakings and I spring off the sofa and leg it up the stairs