daytime naps - when to stop?

[angelfire]

My DS is nearly 2 1/2. He goes to bed at 8pm and sleeps through till 6am. He also has a nap at lunchtime - I have tried limiting this to 1 hour but he won't wake up so it's usually 1 1/2/ - 2 hours. Recently he has thrown in the odd day where he won't have anp and thenn sleeps 12 hours at night - wonderful! How do yyou know when is the right time to stop the day time nap. Do you wait until they don't want it or do you push it and hope they get used to not having a sleep?

Aaargh, we are currently going through the same thing; ds is just 2 and a half. When he doesn't have a sleep he is exhausted by 6 pm - when he does, we are all still up at 10 pm at night. There seems to be no happy medium so I am trying to take it one day at a time. I do find it very hard on the days he doesn't have a nap, so am trying to instigate half an hour 'quiet time' in his room after lunch (you can guess how well that goes down...)

One thing though, he does seem to be getting used to it as the days go on...[sigh]...guess his napping days are truly coming to an end

p.s. If you want to wake him up to shorten a nap, their sleep cycles are in 45 minute intervals so he will be in a lighter sleep and may even wake temporarily after 45 mins. However, interrupting their naps can interfere with their nighttime sleeping - meddle at your peril!

DD nearly 3 still into her naps. Mon-Fri woken up for nursery at 7.30am and in bed 7.00pm naps 1 hr. Weekends wakes up naturally between 7.30am - 9.00am and bed 7.00pm naps for 2.5 hours. At weekend she protests a bit about for a nap but I just say when you wake up you can have chocoltae/ play puzzle etc and she's then out for the count.

ds 22 month has recently droped his nap but i keep trying to have one everday otherwise we have terrible evening as he become overtired and keep crying. I never want my kids to drop a nap.

My dd has dropped hers in the last month (she's 2 years and 9 months). I hung onto it until it became more trouble than it was worth iykwim.
The days are so loooooonnnnngggg now!...oh and it didn't make any difference to her nighttime sleep when i dropped it...so i reckon she must have been ready

My DS turned 3 this month and 5out of 7 days will still have a nap in the day. I limit it to 1 1/2 hours and woke him up. I usually drag him outside for some fresh air to wake him up, otherwise he will eaily just go and lay on the sofa and snooze. He is usually in bed by 7pm and sleeps till 6 or 7 the next morning with a wee-wee wake-up call through the night.

I stopped DD's daytime nap after last Xmas when the routeine went out the window (she was 2 last March). It was so hard to get back into our good routine and, when I let her sleep in the afternoon I had hell to get her up to collect DS from school and she'd be up until 10pm. So I sacrificed my free time each day during her nap (luckily I have help 2 days a week or I'd have been dead!) and her evenings and nighttimes have been wonderful. If she did get tired she could have a sneaky short nap on the way to get DS and she was certainly able to go without a nap. She usually got a quiet time / rest during the day though. It has worked but I think it was early to stop the naps and was partly dependent on DS.

Both ds and dd stopped their naps at about 22 months as they didn't want to go to bed in the evening. Much rather they were in bed at 7ish although agree the days can be long sometimes. dd will still sleep in the car (now 2.2) but ds (3.5) very rarely sleeps in day unless we make him go to bed if we've got a late night (hardly ever). It can be a good thing to give it up though as it's one less thing to fit in your day at the right time etc.. always found it a hassle if I had to be somewhere!