To encourage DD to stop napping at 19 months

[PerfectPennyKilledMyHusband]

DD started nursery 2 days per week at 9 months. Soon after that she dropped from two naps to one. I did think nursery probably encouraged this as she was the youngest there and all the other little ones napped at the same time, which she fell into sync with! But she handled the transition well so I wasn't bothered at all.

We had months of good sleep but then the last 6 weeks or so have just been awful. She's always gone to bed at 7 but now just seems wide awake no matter what time we put her to bed. I've tried moving bed time earlier in case she's over tired but it's definitely not that either. She's not falling asleep until between 10 and 11pm every night.

We have had 5 or 6 days over this time period where we've been out all day and she's refused a nap. On these nights, her sleep has been amazing! She's gone to bed at 6.30-7 and slept until 8am the next day every time.

I know 19 months seems so early to drop naps completely, but on the days when she doesn't nap she's getting 13 hours night time sleep. On the days she naps, she gets normally between 1 and 2 hours nap and between 9 and 10 hours night time sleep. So overall she actually gets more sleep without the nap.

I don't know. Would it be harmful to her in any way to gently encourage her to drop the nap all together?

I would. Drop them during the week and you could do a short nap at weekends if she needs one

Thank you. It's generally been weekends when she hasn't napped lately! Because we are out all day normally and she just seems to refuse to nap in the pram now.

On the midweek days when she's not at nursery she's with me or DH when the other is in work. These days we both follow the same sort of routine - out for a couple of hours in the morning, home for lunch and nap, back out in the afternoon.

So I was thinking for the next 3 days we could do what we do at weekends and just go out all day, so she probably won't sleep.

Then she's unlikely to nap at the weekend either so that would be 5 days of no naps and hopefully 13 hours night time sleep, then we can see how it's going.

It makes total sense in my head, but it just seems so young to drop the nap! Everything I've read says average is age 3.

They need naps for brain development at that age. Each child is different of course but all 3 of mine napped until almost 3 years old.

One of mine stopped napping at 20 months, if it works it works

Seems really young to drop naps to me

Another vote for if it works it works, we dropped to 1 nap at 10 Months, then we stopped naps completely at 2, 4 months later we still don't nap unless it's an extremely fun filled day but then bed time is a disaster. I just make sure that if either of the twins start dozing off at 5 it's stopped or well never get to bed.

Try it and see how it goes but just think that the reason she’s sleeping so long is possibly that she’s exhausted/ over tired which can’t be good but then maybe it works for her

It seems very young but if it works it works. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. She could nap some days and not others. When we were phasing out the last nap (admittedly much older) it took months of some days having a nap, some days not. She would bounce between coping without it to not. It’s a bit frustrating but overall it’s a very short period of their life so we just lived with the unoredictability and accepted sleep would be a bit up and down for a while. She’s settled well now on no nap and is back to consistently sleeping 11-12 hours overnight.

Could you cap the nap to 45 mins instead?

I would personally reduce the length of the nap first.

Give it a try but be open to getting back to napping again, a lot can change in a month even and things aren’t always linear with sleep. I would think like “she’s not napping these days” rather than she’s stopped her nap.