when do you drop day time naps?

[Evita]

Hi, my daughter's 14 months now and sleeps an 11 hour night: 8pm-7am (occasionally 10 and a half), then from 10.30-11.45ish and again from 3-4.15. I know at some point she will go to one nap a day but I don't know how to tell when this is, and how to go about doing it, i.e. fitting it around meal times etc. Any advice much appreciated. She's my first.

I think they vary a lot, but fwiw ds1 dropped his afternoon nap at around 15 months - he just started not going to sleep for it. he always slept very well in the morning so I just pushed the morning nap forward a bit - it was all much easier than I had anticipated! Unfortunately though he does seem to need his sleep at around midday (and will sleep till around 2/2.30), so he has a ridiculously early lunchtime (11.30) and I'm afraid lunches out are not very practicable!

dd decided it for us. She went to just one nap at around 14 months, usually mid/late morning. She is now 27 months and more often than not doesn't sleep in the day time except in the car, even though she has an activity most weekdays. She is still in her cot so she does sometimes spend a quite half hour looking at books or playing there.

It really depends on your routine and your dd but I found it impossible to keep her awake longer unless something exciting was going on and trying to persuade an over tired, grumpy child to eat is very trying.

hth

Ds2 is 3 in Feb and still naps in the day for at least an hour.

DS coincided with moving up a room at nursery at about 13 months but he was not really quite ready. I think most toddlers have their nap shortly after lunch.

DS will be 3 in Feb also and has just (last fortnight) dropped his nap. It was getting later (eg 2.30pm) before he was ready to go down and then sometimes he would just lay there for an hour. Bit of a shock to me because even though going 2.30 he was having 2 hours and then still ready for bed at 7.45 pm. He's very tired though early evening so we have brought bedtime forward slightly and the good news is that many nights he is sleeping 13 hours. I have instigated sitting on his bed and looking at books to replace his nap "would you like to have a nap or have a rest and read books?".

Thanks for all these replies. I guess I'll have to wait and see what my daughter seems to want to do! At the moment I think she'd be too tired to eat lunch if I dropped her morning nap so I'll keep on with it until then.

I went ot one monster one just before 1 - much easier at night time then

BTW you get to an awful time when theya re too tired to eat and have lunch at 2pm

Yes we went through that Coddy. In fact I remember I used to give him two half lunches with the nap sandwiched in between at one point because otherwise he got too hungry but was too tired to eat much.

its like when you drop the sleep and they are horrendous at 5pm

Neither of my children have ever had more than one nap a day. My 4 month old has a lunchtime nap for about 2 hours, till about 3 and then is awake until 9pm. She gets up at 8. My 2 and a half year old dropped all his naps the day she was born. But he only ever had an hour or so in the afternoon. He gets up at 6:30/7 and goes to bed at 8/9. Long days!

Yeah coddy I know we've just dropped it and have had a few fraught tea/bathtimes.

my ds is 2yr2mnths and still sleeps for an hour sometimes more in the day.