Our 21 Month old doesn’t have a set bedtime and has never had set nap times AMA

[ToddlerMama27]

Our 21 Month old doesn’t have a set bedtime and has never had set nap times AMA

🤣🤣

😂😂😂😂

Yeah, it's your routine that did that 😂😂

1st - We started a (gentle) routine at 2 weeks. Baby was sleeping 6 hour stints at 6 weeks. What a fabulous parent I was to have solved it so quickly. Sleep regression hit and she still doesn't sleep through 6 years later.

But, she would nap anywhere, just in the sling or buggy. No rushing home, her naps just slotted into our days.

2nd. We tried and tried to get her to have decent naps out. We tried for nearly a year (then lockdown hit) and it didn't work. She still naps now at 4, due to a disability, and this still needs to be at home.

It's luck of the draw.

God people are aholes on here.

Yeah he loves sleep. Didn't hit any of the regressions. I believe it's genetic too. My mam said we all slept through 🤷‍♀️

Routine works for some babies. It also helped that I started putting him for naps In his cot from 6 weeks. And stopped giving him the boob right before sleep and put him down awake so he learnt to not need me to go to sleep.

"I have one child who is pretty low maintenance; and we are two parents with only one of us working and that from home.... AMA!'

Get ready to learn, folks!

Mt 18 month old gets extremely grouchy at the same time everyday for his nap and points upstairs. He doesn't have a set bedtime but usually around the same time again he gets grouchy so we make our way upstairs.
If he doesn't sleep well he won't eat well and will just be overtired for days so I do stick to the routine and make sire I'm home at Nap times because if we're out he will only sleep an hour max whereas as home its up to 3 hours and then he's happy and eats better and plays better.
I do agree though that each baby is different and not all of them need a set time to sleep

Exactly. Saying it helped your baby doesn't mean it will help every baby, of course it won't.

I did exactly the same with putting him down in his cot, not feeding to sleep and putting him down awake.

@ToddlerMama27 - I'm one of those mums who made sure DS was home for nap time - not because I wanted to, not because I stuck to a routine like clockwork, but for the simple reason that that's what he needed.
He flat out refused to sleep in a car or a pram and the day just descended in to hell when he was tired and then over tired. Just the same as Co-sleeping never worked for us either because the slightest movement disturbs him and results in the same over tiredness that pram naps brought. You might not get it but that doesn't make it wrong. You're doing what's working for you and your child. I did what works for us. I guarantee you'd change your set up if your next child needed something different.

Good for you. I have no questions but just wanted to say mine was the same. We were free and easy about such things, so was our little one, we co-slept a lot of the time and it all worked out well. We did get criticism but who cares? Our kids are not little for long and it's nice for them to be happy while they are.

Young children need routine

We had a bedtime routine but a fairly loose daytime one. But I wanted a child free evening with my husband, and did not want to co sleep (and certainly not when we had two less than two years apart).
The routine worked for us.

You must be very lucky then. My dd wouldn’t sleep in her pram ever. Only in her cot.

Diagnosed as autistic at a much later age. All these people sneering about routines. It depends on the child. If she didn’t have a routine life was hell.

What do you mean you don't 'get' going home for naps? With a silly shrug emoji?

Do you often struggle to grasp that others may have a different experience?

We didn't have to do that either but I had enough empathy to realise that for others where sleep was difficult, particular routines helped and were even under the guidance of a sleep school. I've only ever felt lucky to have a kid who slept in various places quite happily; I didn't do anything to achieve it, I didn't 'deserve it', and if we'd had a different kid we would have done as others do I expect. Including going home for naps, which is not a concept I find difficult to grasp at all.

This is very interesting, you really believe that nothing did in anyway influenced how your childslept ? It's all entirely luck ? You believe that ?

Of course not, I worked very hard with my eldest's sleep. Not at all with my youngest (until she was a toddler and it all went tits up).

But having a baby that sleeps through from 11 weeks, or can be put down awake at 8 weeks and will self soothe to sleep is vanishingly unusual, and extremely lucky. Posters who think their routines help their newborn to sleep through or who say things like "the baby is relaxed because we're relaxed" are mixing up cause and effect.

Well I had a nurse and a midwife tell me that being relaxed helps. 🤷‍♀️ babies can pick up on your emotions. If you're relaxed and not stressing then the baby will be relaxed.

I can't understand why anyone would have set times for naps and bedtime. Our friends/family that are like this are so restricted by their kids routines. They can never just stay out a bit late or go out at certain times of the day. We find we're always the ones agreeing to their schedules so we can see them.

We have set times because both the children and us benefit. The children are not over-tired (generally!) and the adults get predictable down time. However, we can flex the system a bit and will if there's something we want to do. There is one toddler group we've ruled out, but that's because I tried it several times, and it inevitably caused my older child to have an overtired meltdown. Also that group wasn't what I was hoping for when we first went tbh so I wasn't all that motivated to keep trying!

I was super relaxed. Until the baby started screaming for hours on end and waking up every two hours. Then - not so relaxed.

The happy baby who slept well was born in lockdown and the first year of her life was dominated by an illness and then bereavement in the family. I was not relaxed, she was a ray of sunshine.

That is a really good point. We do follow a strict(ish) routine for our children with set nap and bedtime. They do occasionally sleep in carseats or stroller if we are traveling but their sleep is never as good and it feels unfair to not allow them proper rest and quiet time.

@ToddlerMama27 It sounds like your schedule works for you, one thing that I think its important to keep in mind is that our children are children and they depend on us to help set healthy schedules, they often don't know when its nap time, bedtime and really need an adult to help guide them to sleep and to teach them healthy sleep habits.

This is literally a routine. Not letting him nap after 3pm.

And when you describe that he may wake back up after going to bed, this is literally what parents are trying to avoid by creating a routine/having consistency for day time sleep.

Routines are there for a reason, people don't do them just for fun?! If you have the time to be faffing around at bedtime when he either may or may not sleep, sounds like you are more restricted come evening time than parents who have a routine.

My DCs are now adults and we never had a routine. This is in fact the best way of getting things done, because you just do what you want to do and eat and sleep around it. We were very spontaneous - if we went out for the day and we saw that there was a concert on or something, we just went to it, no issues about bedtime. Meals were whatever and whenever, fitting around things. I suspect my DCs did a lot more than other children. They were very often the only children at an event. It's made them flexible.

This! I also have 3 under 5 and was probably also very smug when I had one who was a good sleeper 🤣

I am very flexible with naps and bedtimes mind you and don’t turn down plans due to nap times. But I like to make sure my baby has a long nap some point in the day be it pushchair or cot. And that my eldest go to bed at a reasonable time on a school night. That’s just parenting IMO.

User, we were the same and it worked for us. We had some good times which are now fond memories.

Come back when your child is five and tell me letting them dictate their own bedtime is a good idea 😂

Mine used to go to bed when tired, would be ready for bed, ie fed, bathed, in pjs, but be downstairs with us, quite well occupied and happy, until very sleepy. There's not much point putting a child to bed when they're not tired. My parents did that with me and I would be awake for hours. It was OK as I got older, I used to read, but when I was small it was dreadful and I was scared.