Parents of early risers what time does your toddler nap?

[Chocolatebox34]

My 18 month wakes consistently between 5-6am (6am on a rare good day!). I normally put him down to nap around 12.30pm to try and stay consistent with his nursery schedule but with such early starts, he can really struggle to comfortably make it. He tends to only sleep 1-1.5 hours max so if I put him down earlier, he’d then struggle to make it to bedtime and wake more frequently at night due to being overtired at bedtime.

Usual schedule:
5-6am: wake
12.30pm: nap for 1-1.5 hours
6.30pm: bedtime

I’ve tried later bedtimes to see if it would shift his wake up time but he still wakes at same time or earlier because he then goes to bed overtired.

If your toddler wakes between 5-6am, what’s your daily schedule?

2 year old.

5-6am wake (but we never get up before 6am, she can come into our bed though)
1/1.30pm- 2.30/3pm nap (1.5 hours)
Bedtime starts at 7pm
Asleep by 8pm

At 18m she napped earlier (more like 12pm) but for longer (2-2.5 hours).

I would keep doing what you're doing - it seems very reasonable.

Very soon sleep needs will decrease and it'll get easier. 18 months is a tricky age

It’s a pain. DS was like this and 6am was a lie in. He’s now 3 and only woke about twenty minutes ago so better days are coming your way! Your schedule sounds fine.

Dd went through a phase of early waking (5am) and I honestly tried to change her routine about 4 million times and drove myself batshit with it, and nothing worked.

I think for a lot of kids it really is a phase. I used to bring her into bed with me and give her my phone locked onto Bluey/Hey Duggee and let her watch that so I could sleep for another hour and be less zombie-like.

By 3 she would reliably sleep until 6:30am.

2 years old
Naps can be anytime 1230-3 for an hour and half
Sometimes none now.

Bed at 8/9pm wake up 8am

Its taken a bizarre turn but she has always slept through

Yep, I agree with this. DD spent 5 months waking up around 5.30am when she was around 15-20 months old and it was fucking awful. I tried everything and nothing worked. Absolutely nothing. Drove myself crazy trying to 'fix' it. She just finally grew out of it. She's nearly 3 now and is still in her cot, so things got a lot better on their own (thankfully). My DS is 6 months and if/when he goes through a similar phase, I intend to just embrace it and not go mad endlessly googling trying in vain to find an answer

Yes same! Tried shortening, lengthening, dropping the nap, earlier bedtime, later bedtime - arghh, nothing worked. Then suddenly stopped. I am slightly terrified of it starting again though.

@Winterstars when did it start and then stop for you?

It started at 18 months, which was June for us so it didn’t feel too bad in some ways and he was sleeping through for the first time so it felt like a fair exchange. As summer turned to autumn / winter and dark mornings it did start to get me down a bit. Then just after I had DD, which was July, it stopped. Initially it was still early but after six and between 2.5 and 3 he dropped his nap and then slept later in the mornings. So so SO much better!

Mines like this and at 18 months we were lucky if we could get him to 11am before needing a nap. Thankfully he naps well so could nap until 1pm for an ok-ish bedtime but very little helped.
He’s now nearly 2 and sometimes still needs to go down at 11:30am if he’s had a particularly early wake and then bedtime at 8pm but we’re still lucky if we get to 6am.
At nursery he can go from 5:30-12:30 but honestly he is beyond overtired at nursery and we struggle to get him to sleep because of it during the week. He will then still wake early because of the overtiredness, repeating the cycle.
The only thing that’s made the difference is time and being able to handle longer awake periods. That, combined with a quick morning nap on the way to nursery when he was 16-20 months old to see him through to midday helped combat the overtiredness and not make bedtime super early and guaranteeing another early wake.

@Pizzaandsushi we have the same experience with him sleeping worse on nights after nursery as he tends to nap even later on those days so sometimes his morning wake window is 8 hours, which is mad. Poor thing. And he definitely wakes even earlier when overtired too. So frustrating as if only he slept in later in the mornings, he’d be able to handle it all better! Just wish I could fix it.

I am in this too, and have been for four months. As soon as we night weaned at 14 months she started sleeping through most of the time but waking early. We constantly have a new theory to try but I think it is only gradually changing as she gets older. My view, after reading as many threads on this as I can find, is that there is little you can do! In our case our 18mth old wakes between 5&6 and goes down six hours(ish) after she wakes. I (think) a longer gap between nap and night sleep vs a longer gap in the morning prevents overtiredness for her. Which is annoying because the morning baby classes are always at ten. I’d do what you can to fight the overtiredness and it will gradually shift

We've always done 1st nap within 2hrs of wake up regardless of when wake up is as they still have sleep hormones in their body so end to be a very good quality sleep/nap and usually thats a 2hr nap, and then i usually do 1 shorter nap after lunch around 1:30 to get him through to bed between 6:30-7:30

My 2 yr old is a regular 5.30am riser and it’s killing me! He’s pretty much always been like this so I’m just holding out for the days where he can get himself downstairs or play in his room without wanting company at the crack of dawn.

I never ever put any of mine in a cot at home to nap in the first place so they never knew about it. Their normal was sleeping in car or buggy or mat at nursery

Mind you I didn't put them to bed as early as 7 pm either. They generally slept from atmroubd 8.30 till 8 with exception of nocturnal DD1 who would've naturally slept from11pm till 10am