My son is 14 months old. He sleeps very well at night and goes down without any problems after his nighttime routine. He sleeps for approx 13 hours at night. He is in a great mood in the morning and plays / joins in with whatever we're doing really well. Around late morning he starts to get a bit tired and I put him down for a nap in his cot - he has a tiny whingy cry before but stops within a minute and winds down to sleep. He then sleeps on average for about 40 minutes. If he has slept less than an hour though, he normally wakes up grumpy. If he has longer he is happy to get up. Wehave tried to leave him for a few minutes to go back off, or even tried cuddling him and then putting him back down, but he just gets stressed. So, we then have our work cut out to try to jolly him along because he has not had enough sleep.
He tends to be quite a whingy child when he is tired, and can be a bit that way anyway, which we are working on, trying to reinforce positively etc. He is happy, laughing etc. a huge amount of the time too and is learning, reaching milestones etc really well.
Mid afternoon he gets tired again but VERY rarely goes down for a nap - put in cot he will just cry and cry, and even out in the car he will not go off very easily, and more often than not just gets stressed out and screams in the car (when overtired).
Where are we going wrong?
I feel that the grumpy mood is directly the result of not getting sufficient sleep in the daytime but am not sure what else to try!!!! Maybe someone out there has some good tips - would be very grateful. By bedtime I am at the end of my tether!!~Thanks!