DS is 2years 10 months. His routine over the past few months has been that he has an after lunch nap, anything from 40mins- 2 hours. For about a week now he’s struggled or refused to go to sleep after lunch then gets progressively tired and grumpy till he passes out late afternoon on the sofa or being walked around in my arms like a baby. Obviously then getting him to bed at a reasonable time is difficult even though he’s clearly tired. Once he fell asleep at the usual time but in the car (only an option at weekends). He’s also having frequent night (and even nap-time) terrors which I know are linked to overtiredness and to illness (he’s basically had a constant cold since he started preschool 6 weeks ago). Night terrors aside, he sleeps through till around 7.30am.
He’s found settling at preschool hard and has got very clingy towards me. Also lots of boundary/pushing behaviour and getting whiney/tantrumy when obviously tired. He does short mornings at nursery and is very tired when he comes back, a couple of times on Fridays he’s fallen asleep before lunch. He might not be physically tired by it though as I don’t think he runs around a lot there.
Nursery plus a cold surely mean he needs more sleep not less? DH is convinced the change is linked to the clocks changing but I think it’s more than that. Does he need to drop his nap? Push bedtime earlier so he gets more sleep? Is it just a phase linked to illness or the stress of starting nursery? We are overseas and kids tend to go to bed later/nap longer here than they would in the UK in summer, but DS doesn’t stay up very late and we bring it forward if he seems tired. DH isn’t home till 7 and DS would hate not to have some time playing with him in the evenings.