If your toddler sleeps during the day, are they difficult to get to sleep at night?

[MistressMary]

Only My 21 month old is not quite ready to stay awake during the whole day - although he tries too.
If he does go to sleep, say any longer than half an hour, he is terrible for settling down to sleep.
He has slept for half an hour today, but it was this afternoon unfortunately on a coach trip and is in his cot now and still being noisy and fully awake.
It drives me mental!

Seems to be an age I freqently am noticing here on MN when babies what to stay up all day. I think perhaps all you Mums with this happening have more wakeful children, who on the sleep scale don´t need quite so much or have more endurance for tiredness.

Our dd is 22.5 months and needs her sleep during the day religiously and goes to bed at 8pm (wakes at 7) I am unsure if she did 12 hours whether she would begin fighting a mid-day sleep. She likes 11 hours and I respect that.

Perhaps you need to go and hang with him and get him into a chilled out state and hopefully he will be asleep soon. Then you can relax for the evening!

Ds (2.7) varies hugely whether he sleeps in the day and for how long, but if he sleeps later than 3pm he's a nightmare at bedtime. Its a tricky one and also quite hard to wake them after a short while especially if you could do with the free time in the day. Not a lot of help I'm afraid and I know all are different. My friend's ds napped for about 3 hours every afternoon til he was 3, got up, had tea, played for an hour then went back to bed for a solid 12 hour night!

My dd si 2.5yrs and since she was one she sleeps for two hours after her lunch and I put her to bed about 7.30 - 8pm every night.

All of her friends sleep after their lunch from one - two hours.

I think you should just work on on settling him at night, the whole wind down thing, bath, massage, story cuddles, songs etc. I am sure you have tried it so maybe for a couple of weeks increase the time you spend on winding down.

Oh believe me i have this problem. Ds is 2.11 and he used to have an afternoon nap untill he was about 2 then all of a sudden if he napped in the day for any amount of time even 10 mins he would not go to bed at 7.30pm in the evening.

In fact he tried to have a sneaky sleep this afternoon as we had a busy day and i found him after 10 mins and woke him up but hey presto i can still hear him wondering around upstairs, it drives me mad as i am pregnant and feeling like napping but can't in the day and sleeping very bad at night too then up at 7am with ds at the moment so i am beginning to struggle!

Oh we have bedtime routine here but will keep working on it.
Glad I'm not all alone anyhow.

Ds is 2.4; he sleeps for 2-3 hours after lunch, then goes to bed around 7pm, and chatters, looks at books etc until about 7.45-8pm. He wakes about 7am. Suits me just fine!

Went to sleep finally at 9.30.

Must be marvellous to have all that sleep and still go to bed early.

ds 19 month is the same does not sleep early if have an afternoon nap but i want him to have a nap more than sleeping early otherwise he and ds2 will make me mad.

I'm a newcomer to Mumsnet and have lost a message where I ranted and raved for ages thinking I'm doing everything wrong - probably a good thing as I then found this thread and already feel SO much calmer.

Just good to feel you're not on your own.

My son has a lengthy wind-down period and still is awake for an hour after that. It's as if he needs some time on his own before he can finally settle.

I think that the wind-down period (bath, reading, sitting with them and being with them them for awhile) includes, for some kids at least, letting them wind down on their own (even if this means they're up playing) after you've said goodnight.

I've decided to factor this in if I want him asleep at a certain time. Here's hoping!!! I'll let you know how I get on!!!

Would love to hear if you do something similar?

Thanks for the advice!

Emma

Here's my postscript. Tonight I started the wind down as usual at 6pm then at 7pm put him to bed with the light on and said he could have some quiet time. I went back in 45 mins later and put him to bed and turned off the light and said goodnight. He was asleep when I checked on him at 8pm. I had been able to get on with my evening by 7pm.

It was such a calm and restful way to do things.

I can't tell you what a relief it was to find the discussion below. I hope this comes in handy to someone else. It's made a huge difference for me.

Oh - he was down at 8pm, after waking at 3pm from his afternoon nap!!! I didn't bother cutting his nap short either, just to see what happened. HOORAY!

No doubt this new found routine will change soon, but it's a relief to have found something that works for my toddler (at least for the time being