14 month old refusing Day naps

[kelj2]

For the past few days my 14 month old has been refusing her day naps. She normally has a morning and afternoon sleep and she's the type of kid you put in the cot with her dummies and she'll just go to sleep. The last few days she just sits in there and "talks" to herself until you go in and get her or she starts crying. The problem is by 4pm she's a crying mess. We've tried going down to 1 day sleep but the same problem happens. I know for sure she's not ready to cut naps altogether but I have no idea what to do. She sleeps perfectly fine at night but I'm just at my wits end having a cranky toddler who won't take a nap!

How would she be if you stayed in the room as she went to sleep? Or leave the door open and hang around outside.

Shes about the age of realising that life does not pause when she sleeps, so there may be an element of Fear Of Missing Out

What time are you trying for the one day sleep? She does definitely need at least one nap, preferably 1-2 hours long. Could you try putting her down for it just after lunch? You might need to assist her to sleep for a bit till her body gets used to sleeping at that time and also persevere as she obviously wants to try and fight her sleep!

is it possible to walk her about in her pram? not ideal but better than a screaming toddletlr?

it's something I'm having to consider as I'm cutting down slowly on breastfeeding and have no other sleep assosiations

My ds is 16 mo but recently went through a phase of refusing his naps and then being horrible all afternoon.
He's now back to having his day sleep although it's like the perfect storm- he needs to have a completely dry nappy, a milk, darkened room etc all in place. I've moved our lunch forward to about 11.45 so he can go down at 12 and he usually has 1-1.5 hours. Stick with it op, because they can phase them out quite quickly at this age if they go without them for long enough.

Thank you for all your responses! Unfortunately me being in the room would make it worse. She just stands in her cot wanting me to pick her up. When we tried the one day nap I'd put her down after lunch but she'd only sleep for about 40mins which isn't enough. I'm really hoping it's just a phase like previous poster said. Today I'm trialling just putting her down for her nap at the scheduled time so she knows that it's nap time regardless. We are also going to a play centre with some friends after her first nap this morning so I'm hoping that will tire her out so she'll have another nap this afternoon. She's also cutting her two top teeth so I'm not sure whether teething has anything to do with it either

The only sleeping for 40 minutes would be because her body wasn't set to sleep at that time. She probably needs two weeks of you doing everything you can to extend that sleep beyond one cycle before she gets used to it.

How do you extend the sleep beyond one cycle Kariana? I've heard of people patting their babies back to sleep etc. but she won't even let me do that. She had no morning nap this morning but I took her to a play centre with some friends and wore her out and she slept for an hour and a half this afternoon but when she woke she was still really grumpy and still seemed tired

It is tricky, especially with an older baby. You could try wake to sleep, which is where you go in ten minutes before she would usually wake and disturb her slightly. The idea is that they settle themselves back down into a deeper sleep. It takes trial and error to get the disturbance level right, if she wakes up straight away it was obviously too much, but if she wakes ten mins later at the normal time it may not have been enough. You're looking to achieve a slight stirring in her sleep.

Another option is to go in five minutes before she usually wakes and start soothing whilst she is still asleep. So perhaps reassert her dummy if it's fallen out or play some white noise etc. You could even try back patting to see if it works when she is already asleep, although I think it's a technique that works better on younger babies. This idea is the she is soothed into her next sleep cycle without waking up.

It would probably help if whilst trying this you really wear her out in the morning so she's ready to sleep at lunchtime. It's quite tricky, but if you persevere you will hopefully get there!