22 month old not sleeping

[Toddlernotsleeping]

My 22 month old has never been good with naps, but she has recently decided not to want to nap at all. Her only nap of the day is after an early lunch. She is visibly tired (she wakes up before 6am) but cries and screams and stands up in her cot. She will then be over tired around 3pm, but that’s too late to nap as she’ll end up staying awake until well into the night. She ends up staying awake for most of the day.

She has also started to resist bedtime (used to be 7pm), but once she finally falls asleep she stays asleep until around 6am, usually earlier.

Is this just a phase??

22/23 months was horrific for sleep. It probably is time for the nap to drop, but also there is a lot of brain development that happens just before 2 and they go a bit mad. I remember bedtimes taking til like 10pm.

Does forcing a short nap help at all? Mine used to naturally fall asleep in the car, so there were times I’d just go for a drive for 30 minutes so they would have just a little cat nap and then I’d wake them up. It just took the edge off a little bit just to get through a tough phase. Mostly thought you just sort of have to push through until it gets easier.

She could be starting to drop the nap, although it would be on the early side for it. I'd second the question about what happens if you force a short nap – buggy, car, cuddled up on the sofa with warm milk and something calming on TV, whatever works.

Has she always been relatively low sleep needs? Both of mine are, and we found we had to throw all the schedules out the window and work out how much sleep they needed and how we wanted to allocate it. For us at 22 months, that would probably have been roughly an hour nap after lunch, night sleep 8-6, rapidly becoming 8.30-6 or 9-6 or later if nap was too long.

@mindutopia only the car works! Half an hour is enough for her to recharge.
@skkyelark yes she has never needed much sleep. Even as a newborn! I still think she needs that half an hour or else she gets really upset.