To ask for help with toddler sleep?!

[Mushroo]

My LO is 18 months old and for the past couple of weeks her bedtime has just got later and later.

It used to be we’d put her in the cot, say bye and she’d go to sleep.

Now she just cries and we end up going back and forth. we’ve tried cuddling her, sitting with her, telling her it’s time to sleep and just leaving, but all approaches she just won’t sleep before 8:30 / 9pm.

If I stay with her she’s just messing around (eg every time I went in tonight she started playing peekaboo with her blanket whilst laughing) so she doesn’t really seem tired until about 9pm.

A typical day is:
wake about 7:30
nursery 9:00 - 17:00 with a 1.5 hour nap there.
Home from nursery, play, dinner about 6, more playtime, winding down to some books till just after 7pm.
Bath at 7:15, pjs, books, in the cot for about 8pm.

Weve tried doing the bedtime routine earlier and later and she still takes forever to nod off.

Is 18 months too early to cap the nap? 1.5 hours seems about right from what I’ve read?

Help! I would like my evenings back…

Oh and to add - she gets loads of time outside, no screen time at all and eats really well, so I don’t think it’s any of those things!

How late is her nap at nursery ?

The nap is either too long or too late. Or she isn't being stimulated enough to be tired.

How do weekend bedtimes compare?

We had to shorten the nap to 1 hour at that age and make it a bit earlier. Approx 12.30-1.30 ish. We also found that getting up at 6.45/7am every day (no weekend lie in) also helped to reset his body clock to being ready for bed earlier.

I'll add that at 20 months the nap was 30mins and at 2 years old we had to cut the nap completely. His maximum amount of sleep overnight since then is 12 hours, usually 11 ish, so it makes sense that he wasn't tired for bed if he had a nap.

Could she be over stimulated?

8.30pm to 7.30am is 11hrs plus a 1.5hr nap makes 12.5hrs total, this is right in the middle of average sleep needs (11-14hrs). If you want an earlier bed you'll need to cap nap or wake earlier for the day - you can't make them sleep more than they need. Most cant do a 12hr night

Nap at nursery is about midday - 13:30.

On weekends she absolutely refuses to nap other than in the car / in the pram so it ends up being even later on weekends!

She might be over-stimulated/ over tired but if we start the bedtime routine earlier, it just gets even more drawn out.

Maybe we do need to look at waking her about 7 consistently, and potentially shorten the nap, she just seems to little for a shorter nap! (And I think she’d be mad at being woken 😬)

Has she tended to need the average amount of sleep for her age, or generally a bit less? Mine are both low sleep needs, and for us 8pm bedtime at that age with a 1-1.5 hour nap meant 6am wake. DD2 was more like 8.30, to be honest.

I'd try an earlier start or later bedtime and try to really stick with the new timings for a week or two to let her adjust and see if it seems any better.

Could be a regression. Our DD went from being an independent sleeper to co sleeping. Lasted 8 weeks or so and then she just went back to normal!

Sorry, I meant to add that the sleep regression started when she was 17 months

She has always been pretty low sleep needs. As a baby all her naps were pretty much 30 mins, it used to drive me insane!

It sounds like we need to trial waking a bit earlier, and maybe shortening the nap (and hoping it is just a bit of a regression!)

8pm - 7am ish would be pretty perfect so that might be my aim. Both me and her dad are night owls so at least we don’t have to deal with really early wake ups!

Get up at the time you need to in the morning and put her to bed when she's tired. Both mine had quite a long period when they couldn't (happily) make it through the day without a nap but that meant a later bedtime. I just went with it and never tried to force them into routines that didn't work for them.