22 month old - should we ditch the daytime nap?

[Gravelheart]

At the end of my tether and need advice! My dd is 22 months and is awake until at least 9pm every night. It takes an hour to settle her every night so my evenings are a write off. We have to get up to take ds to school in the morning and dd is always heartbroken to be woken up and is really emotional all morning. She has a daytime nap about 1.30-3 although some days she’ll wake after an hour or even 45 mins. Even with a 45 min nap she’s awake until 9. Am wondering whether it is time to drop the daytime nap and get her to bed early but is she too young to go without it? My ds dropped his nap about 2. Any views/ experience appreciated.

Could you move her nap earlier? 12-1:30 instead?

Unfortunately not as she goes to nursery on Monday Wednesday and Friday morning. They eat lunch at 12.15 and we pick her up at 1 so we can’t really get her down before 1.30. I try to keep it the same time even when she’s at home. I’m not sure she would go to sleep that early actually.

Tricky!! My DC nap 1-3 (or more 1:30-3 by the time we're all upstairs) but my 12mo is ready for bed by 7 and my 2.9yr by 7:30.

Do you try to wear her out in the afternoon? We always go out for a walk with my DD on her bike/scooter to try make sure she's tired for bed.

It's difficult.
My son is 2 years 5 months and if he doesn't sleep in the day, by 5pm he's so overtired and rubbing his eyes. He usually goes to bed at 7pm. And gets up at 8 earliest. He likes to have between an hour and a half to two hours in the day.

22 months is too young to drop the daytime nap, but she isn't getting enough sleep at night if she is overtired all morning. I think you need to focus on getting her to bed earlier than 9pm rather than dropping the daytime nap.

Can you put to bed 10-15 minutes earlier each week until she gets to a more reasonable 7-8pm?

It’s a bit difficult to do much with the afternoon because we have to do the school run. She usually walks home from school but it’s not that far.

WeAllHaveWings - we do start putting her to bed at about 7.30 but she’s just not tired. She’s still doing handstands in bed and chatting away at 8.30. She has a bath with her 5 year old brother at 7 and he’s asleep about an hour before her so she genuinely doesn’t seem to be tired.

My daughter dropped her nap earlier than that and it was fine!

IME with my DC this was the classic age to appear ready to drop the nap, but actually just be massively overtired and therefore unable to settle easily.

If you're having to wake her in the morning, she's not had enough sleep overnight.

It's tricky, as actually I'd say the 1.30 nap time is a bit too late, but there's not much you can do about that during the week.

The hour to get to sleep at night is probably massive overtiredness - I'd actually, rather than looking to move bedtime earlier gradually, just see over the next few days whether you can spot a moment earlier in the evening where she looks tired/gets overtired, and try a bedtime shortly before that. Have a Google of Marc Weissbluth - he's quite good on all this.

Ps handstands in bed and chatting def doesn't categorically mean not tired...might well mean overtired. Both my DCs when younger just displayed increasing levels of energy as they got more overtired - you'd never have caught them yawning or rubbing their eyes until they were crashingly exhausted

At that age DS2 was much the same as your OP. We tried dropping the nap altogether and he was really tired by 5pm. We then tried reducing his nap and waking him after 45minutes everyday. That didn’t really help either. In the end, we found that just napping some days was the answer. If he seemed tired, I put him down. If I thought he’d be okay, we didn’t. He soon started settling better at bedtime, and the number of naps days gradually decreased over a few months.

I also think a nap some days might work for you. Start off by dropping it, and regain the overnight hours. Then after a few nights of decent bedtimes you'll probably see her start to flag in the day - reintroduce it and see how she does that night. You might find, as I did, that a daytime nap has an immediate effect on bedtime, so you'll need to judge the days that she needs it more than the overnight sleep. Or you might find it resets her and she goes back to napping and sleeping ok at night. I think you need to wake her up before 3 though. 2.30 was always the cut off, I found, before bedtime mayhem.

Yes this was the indicator with both mine that they didn't need a nap anymore. I wouldn't say it was to young either DD dropped her everyday nap at 18 months. She would have one every 2 or 3 days for a while until that started interfering with bedtime to.

You will find she'll get really tired in the evening for a while and may need an eariler bedtime to start with. But better to have your evenings back.

Thanks all for the replies - this is my first time on mumsnet! I think a nap some days sounds sensible and see how that goes. She’s actually not slept today quite accidentally as we were travelling back from visiting my cousin. She’s coping ok so will see how she is tomorrow. At least I know she’ll go to bed early tonight!