Looking for anyone who may have had similar experiences and what worked for you to help them!
My 22 month toddler is on the go constantly. She struggles to do anything quiet for any significant time but burns out really fast.
When she was younger (maybe 4m - 12m) she usually made it through the night without waking, but now it’s more often she wakes once. Her bedtime is 730pm, she usually needs us for an hour at 3am, and she naturally wakes at 6am. This is manageable.
What we are struggling with is she will not nap longer than 40 minutes but she’s always tired. By 16m she would wake at 730am, nap once after lunch, bed at 730pm - but now she’s waking at 6am she’s back to 2 naps (11am/2pm). Only 40 minutes at a time, and she always wakes up cranky and spends the majority of her day rubbing her eyes, screaming at us for trying to comfort her, yawning etc.
An average day for her is:
Natural wake at 6, independent/quiet play
breakfast at 8, quiet telly/interactive play
930 dog walk - she’s often walking alongside her pram depending on location.
10 snack in a cafe
11 falls asleep in the pram/car seat (30-40mins) wakes cranky
12 lunch
then it’s just us trying to keep her content for 2 hours (alternates between garden/playgrounds/soft play/sandpit)
2 - naps again 30-40mins and wakes cranky
repeat desperate attempts to satiate her until teatime and bedtime, rarely get any positive responses to anything from this time onwards
My instinct is she clearly needs these 2 naps right now, but they don’t actually seem to help her. The only way to temporarily stop her grouchiness is to change activity, but I’m worried this is just overstimulating her as she gets more manic as the day goes on. Ive tried “quiet days” where we didn’t go anywhere, just hung out in the house and garden, focused on her sleepy cues and only did gentle activities 1 to 1 but she just seemed more frustrated.
Her sleeping environment at home has natural background noise from the road, she has soft music playing, she has blackout curtains, and I monitor the room temperature.
Who has had similar experience, and how did you manage it? Is there anything you tried that worked to either increase their nap time or help them cope with being so tired all the time?