It's that age-old Hobson's choice, it seems, between a long and stressful bedtime trying to get her to sleep when she's just no tired enough, or her zinking out in 3 mins flat at 6.30pm and then waking frequently with overtiredness throughout the night plus an early wake (5.30ish) the next morning...
On days when she has her nap, bedtime takes over an hour, more commonly up to 90 mins, and is a hideous stress-fest of her running about, demanding toys/water/kisses etc, repeatedly getting out of bed (i mean REPEATEDLY, as though it's a reflex, 50 or 60 times in an hour) and this from a child who up until a few months ago would lie down happily in her cot, let me leave the room without a murmur and go to sleep contentedly about 15-20 min later. Now I have to stay in the room with her until she goes to sleep (which I think leads to a more unsettled night so I'd much rather not do) as it's the only way ot prevent her getting up every 30 seconds and finding new reasons not to go to sleep.
We have tried moving bedtime later but all that seems ot happen is overtiredness kicking in plus she is still in a strange sort of way not as tired as she needs to be iysim, due to the nap.
Have cut nap down to 1h30 maximum, actually more like 1h 15, but this doesn't help.
Have moved nap to 12pm so she is awake at about 1.15/1.30 instead of the 3pm she used to sleep until - doesn't help.
It just seems to be that if she naps in the middle of the day, it takes her 90ish min to fall asleep whether bedtime is 7.30pm (as it used to be) or 8.30pm. Haven't tried moving it as late as 9pm because this REALLY isn't practical at all, I need to work in the evenings so can't have this on-going messing about until that late and DH is often late home so all the re-settling falls to me.
(Also fwiw it is not really an option to leave her alone behind a safety gate in the hope she will just settle - she is NOT that sort of child (!) and will be physically sick with upset in that sort of scenario. Nor is it an option to repeatedly return her to bed without saying a word and hope she gets bored - did this several nights in a row (almost a week of it) and if anything it made the situation much much worse as she got very upset and stressed about being 'ignored' (her view) and it has taken almost a week to undo her resulting bedroom-stress from this... (she's a VERY sensitive little soul...!))
Anyway my point really is if it's starting to become time to cut her nap on this basis... part of me feels definitely not as she otherwise becomes overtired, sleeps badly and wakes early the next day.
But could I/should I experiment with moving her nap even earlier in the day and keeping it, say, to just one hour? She is ALWAYS knackered by 11am so I think she would go down happily for an hour or so then - it's often a huge struggle to keep her going until 12.
3 days last week she just WOULDN'T nap which is what, combined with the dreadfully long settle times, made me start to wonder about the nap being on its way out. She got through the day but was obviously a mess of tiredness from about 5pm onwards, screaming through bathtime, meltdowns all late afternoon... and then as I say she slept poorly and woke at 5.45am (usual wake time more like 6.30 on a good day)
So - I don't think cutting the nap OUT is the answer but should I try cutting DOWN/moving it earlier? Has anyone had success with this?
It seems quite young to me but my mum swears me and my sister never napped after age 2 so maybe it's genetic??!!
Thanks in advance and apologies for epic post!
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long, hellish bedtimes with 2.4 yo and uncertain about nap dropping/reducing... any advice?
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DuchessOfWeaseltown · 14/06/2015 19:31
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