Help! Toddler won't nap in big boy bed

[BrownEyedGirl32]

Hi

I have just put my 2.5y DS into a bed as I'm 4months pregnant and needed to move him out of the cot.

Night time was as expected, in and out of bed and then eventually went to sleep ( may have to put a gate across his door!). The problem is that he now refuses to nap after lunch. I use this time to rest and sometimes nap myself! lol!

Does this mean he's now ready to give up his nap? Has anyone else experienced this?
The only upside is that he may go to sleep quicker at night

Any tips greatly appreciated! It's been a long day!

The fact he is refusing to nap in his new bed is not necessarily a sign that he is ready to drop the nap.

He might be, dropping daytime naps is not unheard of at 2.5y. But given that the lack of sleeping has coincided with new bed then I would expect the bed to be the cause of sleep refusal rather than it being developmental.

I would first try the same techniques you are using at bedtime, rapid return I assume. Eventually he will give in and accept that he has to stay in bed and go to sleep.

If you do that for a couple of weeks and he still isn't sleeping them I'd move on to enforced 'rest hour' (or two hours!). This means that you won't have a battle to insist he goes to sleep, but you maintain the battle for him to stay in bed. He doesn't have to go to sleep, but he has to stay on his bed and do something quiet. Films work well for enforced rest hour.

The idea of rest hour is that when child is tired, they will get bored and fall asleep because they have to stay on their bed anyway. But even if not tired enough to go to sleep, having some down time is valuable to their energy levels (and yours).