Day time naps for a 1 year old

[Kaz4755]

Hi

Just wondering what your 1 year olds do. I am having problems getting my just turned 1year old to have an afternoon nap. She goes to bed at 7.15 every night and pretty consistently (touch wood) sleeps through until 6 or so. She goes for her first nap 3 hours after she wakes so is usually back asleep by 9am to 9.30am. She usually has about 1.5hrs sleep and sometimes I have to wake her from this sleep. I then try putting her down between 1.30 and 2pm and sometimes she will go to sleep, but more often than not these days she cries and won't go to sleep. I end up getting her up after 20 minutes or so, first she just babbles and then she cries. I try to soothe her every few minutes but that seems to make her worse. Any tips? I usually end up going out in the car for her second nap and I don't want to get back into that habit.... Feel like I am failing!

Don't consider yourself a failure! They change their requirements as they get older and you kind of have to experiment to see what will work.

I think she might need more awake time in between the 1st and 2nd nap, so perhaps try doing her second nap later, as long as it doesn't impact her bedtime. Or shorten the first nap and make the afternoon nap longer?

By 1 dd was down to 1 nap before lunch time so maybe try 1 long nap?

I was advised to keep the morning nap short (around 45m). If you wake her a bit earlier she might be more ready for a second nap. Try that for a few days but if she's not going for it you may have to accept she's ready to drop to one nap and start pushing the Morning nap later.

15mo up at about 7.30, nap at 11.45 for about an hour and a half, bed time at 7.30.

Your child is at the optimum time to drop to 1 nap.

I am a nanny and dc has just turned 1 - dc has slowly dropped from having an hour at 9 am and 2 hours at 1pm to having 2 hours at around 12/12.30pm.

Both my school dropped to 1 nap a day at about this time. Straight after lunch for a couple of hours.

I agree with dropping to one nap but you'll have to phase it in.
Try 9.15 - 9.45
Then 12.30 - 2.30
Bedtime 7pm

Then keep reducing the first nap down until it's gone. You'll have to move the lunchtime nap up to 11.45 for a while once the morning nap is gone but then you can gradually push it back again.

I am in your position exactly. Put a thread out a couple of days ago called 2/1 transition . Feel like I am getting all my timing wrong. I help to sleep for naps as I have to fit them in around a school run and he settles for bedtime. However it is taking ages to get him down in the day. My DS has pretty much the same routine as yours but like you it is going pear shaped . As Lapinrose rightly said, I have been advised to cap the morning nap to 30 mins or so and then put him down again at one or earlier. Mind you still took ages to get him to have that afternoon nap, then when he slept I thought he may sleep forever, had to wake him at three. I will keep trying but I think our LOs may well be ready for just one nap. Mine goes to a cm twice a week and there he will only sleep once In the day(however only for 30 mins, ahhhhhh). If he can manage that I am wondering whether to keep capping that morning nap and then put him down for a lunchtime sleep. Let me know how you get on x

Yes you can slowly curtail the first nap over a period of time however I have found with dc2 that he can more or less make it to 12 without a nap so I try to make lunch for 11.30 ish and then pop him to bed straight after. My plan is to push lunch a bit later each day until he's in bed 12.30 ish

I'm in a really similar situation except I've found the afternoon nap getting later and later which then makes bedtime a nightmare! I've just started experimenting with one long lunchtime nap and so far thigs seem to be working out pretty well (except now I can't meet friends for lunch!)

My 1 year old (21 months) only has 1 sleep and has for a while. He just dropped his afternoon nap and now sleeps for 1 1/2 hours at about 10.30. Maybe your lo is trying to tell you she doesn't need an afternoon nap anymore?

Hello! Thank you all for your advice and replies, it sounds like a few of us are going through the same. My dd is my first and I just thought they kept their two naps until about 18 months, clearly I don't have a clue! Dd went down for 45 mins this morning from 9.30 until 10.15 and then we went out for a bit and then I put her back down at 1.45, so far so good! I guess I just need to try tweaking a few things. I figured she still need a morning sleep of some sort as she usually conks out for so long. We will see how long she stays down for, we are having scaffolding put up today and they are so b.... Noisy I'm surprised she went down at all! X

My DS now 13 months did this exact same thing at about 11.5 months. Drove me mad. Some days he was going from 10.30am to bedtime with no nap. He was a mess.

I tried cutting his morning nap short but that didn't really work, so I moved it back 15 min a day. He now sleeps at 11.30 usually between 2 and 3 hours. If he has a short nap then I do a mini car nap about 4pm and if the nap is 2 hours only then I do an early bedtime. Sometimes we have a 2 nap day if he's not slept well the night before and he's really losing it. It seems to be working for us and he actually adjusted really well to sleeping for longer.

Ideally I'd like to get him sleeping at 12.30 or 1 rather than 11.30, but I figured I can work on that with time.