How do you drop the last nap?

[crazychemist]

Hi there,

DD is 2.4 and I really think she needs to drop her nap, but I’m not sure how to do it without mayhem!

She is a naturally late riser/sleeper, but her bedtimes are really taking the biscuit at the moment. In the past, she would usually be asleep sometime between 8 and 10pm from the age of 3 months, and generally it slid towards 10pm and then she would drop a nap and it would be back to 8pm, and then slowly slide again.....

Bedtime is now midnight. Twice this week it’s been well past that and I daren’t look at the clock because I know I’ll be up in a few hours! She simply is not tired any earlier. I can leave her in her room, she’ll lie down if she’s told to and close her eyes. If I walk away, she stays quiet for a few minutes and then she is up and about, singing to herself, playing with her toys and bouncing on the bed...... the next morning she is absolutely exhausted if I try to get her up at a reasonable hour!

If I let her stay up late, she is happy and content, and then when I say it’s sleep time just after midnight (!) she goes to sleep easily and happily and sleeps through. She has a 2 - 3 hour nap in the early afternoon.

If I don’t let her nap, she is ready to go to sleep at about 9pm (so 12 hours of awake time), which would be completely fine and I would hope to gradually slide wake/sleep times earlier over time. But then she has an incredibly broken night because she gets overtired, and she wakes at half an hour, then every hour or so all night. She screams and is miserable and hard to resettle and is horrifically grumpy the next day.

I thought the obvious thing would be to shorten her nap. That was an absolute disaster. She still stayed up till very late, but instead of happily playing was miserable and grumpy AND we had the broken night!

Keeping the nap is resulting in a ridiculously late bedtime. Skipping the nap means overtired and broken sleep. Shortening the nap gave the worst of both worlds! If I drop the nap, will she adjust to the change in a reasonable amount of time?

Basically I’d love some advice on how things go when you phase out the last nap!

We are right here! DD is 2.3 and fluctuates between needing a nap and not.

When she doesn't have one, we start bedtime at 6-6:15 so almost an hour earlier than normal and she drops off during story time! We're still figuring this out...

When she used to nap, she was also a 2-3 hour napper. It was wonderful!
So now I limit to 90 mins or 2 hours if she complains! (No mummy, sleep!)
If she does nap, we go to 7pm bedtime kickoff or a little later if she seems happy enough.

It's a real balancing act right now. When it comes to waking her from a nap, I open the door and busy myself upstairs so she can hear noises to try and stir her awake gently, every now and then calling her name. I can only do this on days I'm with her though! Nursery naps are here and there and she tends not to nap at MILs.

Sorry, that was a bit of an essay!

Extremely envious of your later bedtime still being so early! What I wouldn’t give to be able to go to bed by 10pm some nights.....

We have to be up by 6:30 every day because my DS 2.10 needs heart meds delivering. An earlier morning might mean an earlier night - he’s certainly asleep for 7:30 every day (I don’t advocate 6:30 by the way it’s torturous)
He’s on his way to dropping his nap too I’m just thankful they’ve gone on so long as I have a 6 month old so that precious bit of time with just one baby in the middle of the day has been ace and if I can coordinate the naps then all is well with the world. Increasingly he doesn’t want to go for a nap but he tends to pass out on the couch without warning and then is up extremely early (5:45 this morning 😭) so definitely could do without it. I was thinking I’d make it 30 minutes and then 15 and then drop it over the next month? God knows.

I’ve tried an earlier start, but it doesn’t work at the moment. She’s just in a foul mood and falls asleep again as soon as you stop actively doing something with her, so I’ll pop into the kitchen to get her breakfast and she’ll be fast asleep on the sofa when I get back, even if she’s sitting up! I figured that’s because she’s so exhausted by the late night, I’m hoping if we can work towards a decent night’s sleep then I can gradually creep times.

I wouldn’t mind an earlier start, on my working days I leave the house at 5.15, so it’s a killler if I’m up till 1am! But if she doesn’t nap she’s up so much in the night that I don’t always get back to sleep between wakings.

Oh man 4 hours! You poor thing.

I would cut the nap. It'll take a week or so for her to adapt to it, but midnight bedtimes are bad for everyone.

My 23 month old is gearing up to drop her nap, andbedtimes are painful! X

My dd is 2 years and 2 Months. She sometimes has a nap at lunchtime that lasts for 2 to sometimes 4 hours and would still go bed at 6:30 and sleep through until 7:30.

Yesterday she slept for 2 hours at lunchtime and went to bed at 6:30 and would not sleep, Kept asking for milk and cuddles. She eventually went to sleep just after 10pm, then woke at 3am and was awake until 4:35 😭😭 I'm absolutely shattered this morning.

So im guessing I should drop her nap now 😢 I relied on that nap to get housework/jobs done, she's chaos when she's awake and you can't just get on and do stuff 🙈

This sounds rough. I think you should decide what you want your day/night to look like, then stick to it religiously - eg, up at 7, no nap, bed at 7. Like someone said further up, it might take a week or so for her to adapt to whatever change you make, and you might have days that feel like a total disaster, but stick to it and she will eventually adjust.

How much have you persevered with getting her up earlier and shortening her nap? Might take a few days for her to adjust.

What time does she wake in the morning? My priority would be getting her in line with you, really.

Hi biscuit, we did persevere quite a bit. Her old routine used to be that she was up between 7.30 and 8am if her own accord, but on two days a week when she had nursery she would be woken at about 7.15, which she was fine with. Bedtime has gotten later and later and later and we stuck to those timings despite it causing lots of upset and her being less cooperative in the mornings. The problem is she just nods off if left for more than a second or two, and sleeps in the car on the way to nursery now.

I’ve buggered up today. I left her to sleep in this morning, and she woke up nice and cheerful at 10.30am. I figured having had plenty of sleep we could go for a no nap day and get her to bed at a decent hour. She fell asleep at dinner...... I’ve put her in bed and I’m hoping that I can get a half decent night (it will be broken, but might be okish). I’m dreading that the most likely outcome is that she wakes up in 2 hours feeling refreshed and ready to go!

Please please please please please let me be able to convince her to sleep off and on until morning!

Oh, we did try nap shortening, and it was definitely the worst of both worlds, we did it for two weeks and it was two weeks of absolute hell

I'd cut the nap to 1.5 hours max which is 2 sleep cycles and wake up by 3pm at the latest.

She will be awful for a few days but will adapt.

I'd also start getting her up earlier. I'm not sure what tine she wakes now but if she's sleeping late, I'd start waking her 15 minutes earlier. Do it every 2 or 3 days.

So if she sleeps till 10, wake her at 9.45 am for the next 3 mornings. Then wake her at 9.30 am for the next 3 mornings and keep doing it until she's waking at 7 or 8 am, whichever suits you best

Yep, today was a bit of a write-off in terms of getting her on a better schedule. Having fallen asleep into her dinner at 6.15pm, she slept until midnight, woke wanting a huge cup of milk (presumably hungry from not finishing food), was then awake until 1.45 asking for a story. She then slept until 10am (she's with my mum today). So all in all a bit of a disaster in terms of getting her on a good routine!

I'll try waking her earlier, but (ignoring the last two days) normally I get her up between 7&8 and I don't really want to get her up earlier than that as I quite like having a lie-in till at least 7 on my non-working days/weekends. Perhaps if I stick really rigidly to 7am it might help a bit.....

Nap shortening really doesn't seem to work for her. The problem seems to be that after any amount of sleep at all (whether that's 30 mins or 2 hours) she is awake for 8 hours before she seems remotely tired. The length of the nap only seems to affect how well she sleeps once she does finally get to sleep - a long nap means a peaceful night, a short nap means a broken one!

I'd like to try your idea loops, but yesterday it was just completely impossible to keep her awake after 8 hours (although she has managed it once or twice before without a nap).

Has anyone had any success with different routines on different days e.g. napping two out of three days so that DC get gradually used to going without a nap but don't get too overtired from doing it every day? Or will I just completely confuse her? I wonder if that might work if it's associated with other bits of routine e.g. she doesn't nap on Mondays and Thursdays (she's always home on those days), but does nap on nursery days and weekends. Then if that goes Ok I could gradually cut out the other naps?

If she's sleeping till 10, I'd definitely be looking at waking her up earlier

I would just instigate a 7-7 routine and keep her awake, certainly until lunch - if she does fall asleep after lunch then let her have 20 minutes max. Do it over a weekend or when you have a few days you can avoid car journeys.