do you wake up your lo when you think they've napped enough?

[mammaduck]

My DS is 15 months and is brilliant at sleeping at night (7pm-6,6.30am).

he also has a mammoth nap after lunch - usually 1,1,30ish. Here's the thing. He used to wake up naturally after about 2 hours and then we'd get a bit of afternoon together.

But recently he doesn't wake up voluntarily after his nap so I've been waking him at 3.30pm, so that he has a bit of afternoon before supper at 5.30pm. often he is sound asleep and reluctant to wake up and takes a while to rouse.

Today i'm leaving him a bit longer, but i think if i leave him too long he won't sleep at night. don't know. never tried it.

So, do you wake up your LOs to keep them in some kind of routine, or let them nap as long as they want?

I let DS nap as long as he wants, and have said the same to his nursery (well, there is a practical cut-off of three hours there, but up to that point as long as he wants). It really doesn't seem to affect how well he sleeps at night. He's 23 months now but I've pretty much always followed that approach. Generally he naps 1.5 - 2 hours, but sometimes it's 2.5 - 3 hours.

I really like my sleep and keep thinking how annoyed I am if I get woken up when I'm really not done sleeping yet, so I guess I'm projecting that onto DS a bit.

I agree that you just have to try it and see how it goes. My ds is always up by 05:00 am, so I would try to limit his day-time sleep if he slept for that long, but as long as it doesn't affect your ds' night-time sleep, I can't see that there is any harm...

I let BabyDragon sleep as long as she likes early in the day but would wake her from a late afternoon/early evening nap to avoid bedtime problems.

Can you bring lunch forward and put him down earlier? If he has lunch at 11 (or a sizeable snack) he may sleep from 11.30am onward, then it doesn't matter how long he sleeps really?

Or the other thing would be to experiment and just let him sleep on, though you could be dealing with him all evening if it turns out it does stop him sleeping at night!

Our ds was hell to settle in the evening if he slept after 3 or 3.30pm......

We just leave our dd - now 3.5 - if we wake her she wails for hours! It's just not worth it. A long sleep in the afternoon may mean a slightly later bedtime but then she tends to wake up later in the morning which is nice!

Have tried giving lunch at 12 so he's in bed by 12.30, 12.45 and that works, but he still sleeps really long time in the afternoon. Any earlier he doesn't want lunch.

it's just getting that afternoon appointments (doctors, playdates etc) are getting a real headache because he is just asleep for the vast majority of the afternoon.

I've just woken him up slowly (opening blinds gradually) and he wasn't too grumpy, but he is sometimes, even after 2.5 hours sleep and 12 hours at night!

it just seems like a hell of a lot of sleep! wish i had it so good, i guess!

If he doesn't want lunch earlier, this might be good actually....why not give him a little snack, put him down earlier and see if a hungry tummy wakes him up during the afternoon? He could have a light lunch around 2 or 2.30 and still have room for supper later?

DS used to be able to sleep late and it not affect bedtime. eg on Fridays we went swimming 1-2 so he was not going to bed until 2.30 ish and would have a long nap.

DD can rarely have a nap like that because of the school run or other arrangements so, yes, I often wake her up, and I do feel bad sometimes - but not as bad as I would if there was no-one at the school to collect DS!

Message withdrawn

Generally I let him sleep as long as he like but I do know what you mean about the afternoons disappearing.

If I'm home for the day and I'm taking ds to a morning toddler group or some other activity aimed at him it can be difficult to find the time to do anything else (like food shooping, picking up dry cleaning, going to Post office etc) as he can sometimes sleep until after 4pm (especially if he doesn't get down for his nap until after 1pm). This means by the time he is awake it is almost tea time so getting out to the shops with him is very rushed.

Dh has a rule about waking ds by 3.30pm but tbh unless I really need to go somewhere I can rarely bring myself to wake him unecessarily as he is usually so grumpy.

Sometimes he cries for so long that I can't get out of the house anyway as by the time he has calmed down - the shop I want to go to is usually closed- so I've woken him for nothing

Pitch-no, he's been fine. Did have MMR/Pneumonia jabs recently though. No obvious reaction - he was sleeping this long in the afternoon before the jabs so I don't think it's a reaction to them.

We are going to try lunch at 11.45 and let him sleep after that until about 4pm and see how that goes.

thanks for all the advice!