17 mo, surely he isn't ready to drop his nap? What do you think?

[FifiFerusha]

Hi all,

So my DS had got onto a good routine of a two to three hour nap from 12 noon and then a bedtime between 7.30 or even 8.30. The christmas holidays sent things a little astray but kept to it best I could. The thing is he could sleep forever for his daytime nap if he could but then would play in his cot for at least an hour before BT. Now it is getting worse, it is getting to 9pm and he still is struggling to sleep so I am starting to help him settle. This is making me worry as I worked hard at teaching him how to settle himself and he was always, bar the odd regression, happy to do that. Today he was at the cms and didn't nap at all. At his wits end of OT he settled for BT within five minutes. Could he be ready to drop his nap so early on( I sincerely hope not) . I started capping his nap to one hour and a half at the start of this week but it made no difference and he still struggled to SS until 9pm when I had to help him. It is also affecting my 6yo DDs BT, which is at 8 pm. Thinking they may need a joint BT routine but not sure DD will take to this.

So is he showing signs of the 1/0 transition or am I entering another sleep regression? Anybody been through this?

Advice much appreciated x x

I work on the basis that I don't want to have to deal with any whinging, crying, clinginess and all the other trappings of an over tired toddler.

If he can go from waking up through to, say 6.30pm without showing signs of being tired, then go for it. I wouldnt being bedtime any earlier than 6.30 though, because of the effects on get up time in the morning.

If he is a handful though, then you dont need to power through just so he manages without a nap. That's not good for him, if he needs sleep then he needs sleep.

I've known children sleep 14 hours at night and have no nap, just 6pm-8am solid sleep. That's fine, but I'd imagine rare. If your DS has a big, long night sleep then maybe that's his natural sleep cycle.

In your position I would firstly just give it a few weeks without changing anything. It's just been Christmas, loads of colds and sore throats doing the rounds. He might just need time to settle back into normality.

Then I'd still an issue, I'd move around the routine. I'd probably make nap time an hoir earlier and limit to an hour at first - so 11am-12pm. See what that does.

It is not unusual that there will be backward steps when baby needs more reassurance to sleep than they had previously. Lots of things cause thesebackwards steps. I'd go back to reassuring to sleep and then gradually extract myself again over time.

Thanks FATE! Yes am hoping that the mix up of christmas and slightly later bedtimes may not have helped. He is also, and obviously waking a lot later in the morning at 7/8 as opposed to 6, if not before. So this has thrown things around for him re how tired he is by nap time( he is resisting that too but I have never worried about helping him to sleep for naps( not now anyway) as it doesn't/ I mean didn't, affect these skills at BT. Thing is he really doesn't cry or whinge at BT, he sings, giggles, kicks the cot, he loves being put down in his cot ????? etc.....

He went to bed early for him tonight(7pm), he normally sleeps 11 hours at night, and he is at the cms again tomorrow so see if this turns things around by the weekend. In all honesty I am hoping he doesn't want to drop his nap. I will go with the advice of sticking to it for a little while to see if there if anything else at play and then rethink. I thought he was far too young to drop the nap but he has always dropped his previous naps earlier than average. Thank you for your advice( again and again x x x)

Good luck!