Toddler singing/chattering for hours

[Hakarl]

My toddler (aged 2.5) is in a great routine and goes to bed nicely without a fuss, other than a bit of prevaricating. Once she's asleep she sleeps soundly all through the night unless ill or something.

The only problem is that some nights she takes absolutely forever to fall asleep. She doesn't call for us or cry, she just chatters and sings happily to herself, which is very cute to hear and would be fine if it didn't go on for so long. She's in bed by 8 pm but some nights is still chattering away at 11. If we go in she looks shattered so I don't think that she's just not tired, it's almost like she just can't switch off. She has to get up at 8 am to go to nursery and she's exhausted in the mornings when she's stayed up late.

We've tried going in and resettling her, telling her no more singing now, go to sleep and then she's quiet for a few minutes before it starts up again. Her bedtime routine is pretty relaxed - into pyjamas, warm milk and a story, brush teeth, into bed, one of us sings her a lullaby, kiss goodnight and that's it.

Is this something she'll grow out of? Is there anything we should be doing to help her get to sleep that we're not doing now?

Does she sleep at all during the day?

She does on the days she goes to nursery. I think it's the routine and maybe a bit of peer pressure with all the other kids napping, but also partly because she's a bit knackered in the mornings on weekdays because of her evening chattering sessions!

On the weekends we don't wake her up and she will usually sleep in until somewhere between 9 and 10 am (which is obviously quite nice for us but I feel bad for her going into nursery exhausted during the week). She sometimes needs a nap on weekend days and sometimes not.

I don't know, maybe we need to cut out naps entirely and put her to bed earlier or something? She has always needed a lot of sleep and I think is destined to be a type B kind of person.

If she has a daytime nap it's typically about an hour in length. She goes down around midday at nursery and around 1 or 2 pm on weekends, depending on when she got up. We never let her sleep later than 3 pm but perhaps even that is too late.

Mine did this. Shushing outside the door when he talked fixed it for a bit but mostly we’ve ended up dropping the nap. If he does nap (every 3 days or so) he’ll wake in the night and chat for an hour before going back to sleep.

It would be less irritating if he’d talk quieter so I could sleep through it!

I would try a longer bedtime routine with an earlier bedtime. 8pm would be too late for my toddler, especially if he hasn't napped. Admittedly he is up much earlier, 6:30ish normally, but that doesn't vary at weekends either. I would think if she's lying in at the weekend she perhaps needs more sleep throughout the week.

When does she have her tea etc? With my DS (he is 3.5) we have tea at 5:00-5:30 and then 30 mins of quiet play or tv. We go upstairs at 6:00 and he has a bath. We do PJs and stories etc at 6:30 and lights out by 6:50. He is usually asleep by 7:15.

If he naps in the day, we adjust the timings a bit and do lights out around 7:30, he's then generally asleep by 8 which means he still gets 11 hours of sleep, which seems to e what he needs.

I am no sleep expert though, but that's what I'd be trying if my DS was struggling to switch off at night.

I think she needs at least 12 hours still and it's actually not unusual for her to do up to 14 when she gets the chance. On the weekend days when she doesn't nap we do move bedtime forward to 7 pm and she still won't usually wake up earlier than 9 even if she does go straight to sleep (which she does sometimes). The chattering sessions happen maybe 50% of nights, not every night. It's just like if she gets started, she finds it hard to stop. We had the Jingle Bells tune on a loop for genuinely about 40 mins last night.

Dinner is usually at 6, then into bath or go to play at 6.30 and we start the bedtime routine by 7.15 or so to leave room for her delay tactics and to ensure time for at least one story. We do more stories on nights when she is quicker but she is the queen of prevarication at the moment.

She probably would do better on no naps and an earlier bedtime really, but it would be a painful adjustment for her as nursery tells me she's really drooping by nap time and much more cheerful in the afternoons.

My 2.9 year old does this, her 4 year old sister will be asleep and she’s chatting, playing with dollies and singing to herself, no crying. If it goes on until past 8.30 I go in and settle her down and she usually complies.