28 month old sleep and behaviour issues - help! Is this normal?

[AcademicMumWithTooManyPets]

My 28 month old DD is becoming quite the handful on her “holiday” from nursery and it’s causing huge amounts of stress with my OH.

She was always a very good sleeper and slept through from 5 months old, regularly took naps and never had any problems being left to settle on her own. Since her “holiday” has started (we aren’t going anywhere, just taking her out for activities) she has dropped the naps almost completely, and suddenly turns up in our bed at 3.30am. This is completely unusual for her and is resulting in some pretty tired and stroppy behaviour. I’m told she’s fairly advanced - can talk in whole sentences, very active (walked at 9 months) and can do things like eat with a knife and fork and recognise certain words in books - so part of me wonders if this is just her developing early (not napping, coming into our bed is stuff I expected later) or if this is something we need to nip in the bud and get her back on a “schedule” (ie nap consistently at 1 and bed consistently at 8).

Any ideas? She is being pretty challenging and my husband who has zero patience, isn’t handling it well.

My LO dropped their nap a lot earlier than this so I don’t think 28 months is particularly early to stop napping. If she’s dropped her nap and is still going to bed at 8 though she must be very tired. Have you tried putting her down to bed earlier? Does she wake up for the day at 3.30 or does she go back to sleep in your bed? If she’s waking for the day that early I think you just have to ride out very consistently taking her back to bed and telling her it’s still night time. You could try a gro clock or even a digital clock (if she recognises numbers!) with a clear expectation of when she’s allowed to get up. She’ll protest I imagine so depends of you’re up to power through the crying.
I don’t think any of this is particularly unusual though. They go through stages with sleep long after the baby stage. Maybe your partner should do a bit of research about kids so they relate this too.

I agree that it's a pretty typical age to drop the nap, or at least drop the nap some days, especially if she isn't being as active as she would be at nursery. It's a bit of a shock to the system, to no longer get that break in the day (DD1 dropped it right as DD2 was born, less than ideal!), but if she's not tired, she's not tired. We did try having some quiet time reading stories or watching something calm around nap time, but it didn't really last for us.

We do have a day/night clock (ours is the Purflo Snoozee one, so it does yellow sun/blue moon, but also has numbers), which DD1 loves. It has helped some with both bedtime and staying in bed in the morning, although she isn't 100% perfect on staying in her own bed until it turns yellow.