Morning nap = 6am wake up

[minibmw2010]

DS is 14 months. Some days he can cope fine without an AM nap, some days not so we are still getting rid of it. I only let him have 45/50 mins max and then he usually has 1.5 hrs in the afternoon.

But now he's waking at 6 which means of course he's shattered by 9.30 and its getting more frequent again in the morning.

What to do ??? He's generally in bed asleep by just after 7.30 (routine starts at 7).

Changing a routine is always tricky but you'll be fine in the end, don't give up!

Is this a summer light thing perhaps? Could you get him to sleep a little longer with more light-proofing in his room?

Might he stay asleep a little longer in the morning if you curtailed the afternoon nap to an hour?

Or could you change what you do between waking up time and lunch time? Could you have a no-toys/exciting-bouncythings/telly until 7:30 rule? i.e. "it's still sleepy time, if you are awake you can look at books but no the day has not started yet" (at 14 months I realise this is not an easy concept to understand, this is what we did with DS at 22 months-ish)

When he starts to wilt at 9:30, can you do something to jolly him along for an hour (a silly game, or something involving consuming sugar?). Then firmly assert "You can't have a nap till after lunch" - but be prepared to serve lunch at 10:30 at first (you may need to give a bit less breakfast to make sure there will be room), then once you have the routine established that the order of activities is wake-play-lunch-nap-wake-play-dinner-sleep then you can start pushing lunch gradually back to the middle of the day.