To drop nap or not?

[FartingAgainstThunder]

DS turned 2 at the start of April.
He usually has a nap between 11-1 and goes down between 8pm/9:30pm

The nap has gradually been getting shorter and the last two days he didn't nap at all.

First day was a nightmare, he was a whingy grump, struggled to go down at night, (we tried to put him down at 6:30pm) woke for an hour at 2am but got up at his usual time of 7am.

Yesterday he stayed up all day but went down no problem at all at 7pm and slept through to 7am.

So today I'm faced with choosing whether to try and leave the nap as dropped and do an earlier bedtime or try and get him back into his midday nap.

I've read that keeping a nap for as long as possible is good for their development.
If he is going to bed so much earlier then DH will hardly see him through the week and selfishly I will not get a break during the day.

But he seems well rested and happy today and he's got to drop the nap sometime I suppose.
What would you do?

They’re still pretty young to be dropping all naps. If you are happy with the current routine then personally I would continue to encourage them to nap. I let my DC nap until they were almost 4 at nursery as DH and I both worked full time and it meant we could all spend a few hours together in the evening. We were okay with them going to bed at around 9pm. Also is 11 too early to go down for a nap if they wake at 7? At nursery they usually nap after lunch. I don’t think they would have been tired enough to go down for a nap at 11 at that age.

I’d drop it- and I had one child who napped until gone 3 and one who dropped it before 2. My advice is at their usual nap time have some down time- tv time, books in a quiet space. Takes a few days but it will get easier.

DD was a bit older but what we did was a period of a few months of nap and no nap on alternative days.

So no nap, and super early bed time (as early as 6:30 or even 6pm). Then the next day, nap, but a much later bed time (could be as late as 9:30/10:00). I think we did this for about 3 months or so until we dropped the nap completely and she had an early bed time for a good few years, even earlier when she started school as she was exhausted.

Both mine dropped theirs at 18 months - nothing wrong with their development! One just got a 1st class degree, the other got 3xA*s at A level.

Well he took today's decision into his own hands by asking for his cosy (his oodie which we put on every naptime) and his dummy at bang on 11am.
Went down for about ten past.
I'm thinking of bringing bedtime forward to starting at 7pm and seeing how his nighttime sleep goes doing this.

If he starts getting up super early, perhaps I could wake him from his nap around 12ish.

I suppose it's all just trial and error really, But interested to see what's worked for other parents.

Can you try a nap every other day? It's good that he asked for it - to drop it completely on such a young boy is going to be a shock to his system!

When my son turned two, he also decided that napping was for babies. I had a gut feeling that he was ready to begin to drop it, and after a brief transition he napped 6 days out of seven. It took months before he stopped napping completely, and even now (nearly 3) he still comes for a snooze cuddle on the sofa with mummy. At 4pm 🙄

Basically, follow his lead but trust your instincts if you think he still needs his nap.