How long do they take to drop the last nap?

[crazychemist]

Hi there,

My DD is 2y5months. It’s a bit earlier than I’d expected, but the last nap has to go! If she naps she is awake till midnight, which is an absolute killer.

We did have a couple of weeks where she was napping on alternate days, which meant at least she had a reasonable bedtime half the time, but on non napping days she gets overtired and then wakes at night. When she naps, when she eventually goes down she sleeps through.

How do you get through this stage? Should I just try to be really firm on not napping? She’ll definitely still have one two days a week at nursery, but I can survive it if it’s not every night that’s so late!

Any tips for how you got over this phase would be hugely appreciated, we didn’t have this kind of trouble with previous nap transitions, they were all pretty smooth.

DS is the same age and naps are hit and miss. He used to do 12:30-2:30, then 7:30 bedtime with him usually asleep for 8:30-6:30am.

We’ve been busy lately and often not home for nap time- He then gets overtired and grouchy by 4pm and will often wake in the night.

Today he fell asleep at 2:30 and I woke him at 4:30 so no chance of him going to bed any time soon!

DS is the same age, we were having the same problem.

Previously he was napping for an hour and 20 minutes after lunch, and not going to bed until 10.30/11.

We found no naps to be too much for him, so now we let him nap but wake him up after half an hour and don't let him nap later than 2.30.

I feel awful waking him but since doing this he's gone back to being asleep by 7.30.

Oh and to add, j let him have 45 minutes recently, and it was back to a late bedtime. 30 minutes is his absolute cut off point for a decent bed time

If I wake DS I then get 2 hours of him being completely evil. He absolutely hates being woken and is a nightmare!

If you wake him and suffer the evil, does he still sleep reasonably well overnight? I wonder if that might be a trade worth living with for a little while until she’s able to manage without....

My DS doesn't like to be woken, but we just have to sit in silence having a cuddle for a few minutes until he comes round in his own time.

Often I just time car journeys well, then he doesn't go in to as deep sleep like he would when he's in his bed.

Car journeys work well for us, but I don’t have my own car during the Day (DH takes it to work) so that usually doesn’t work for us unfortunately. Pram naps used to be fairly light, but unfortunately she sleeps deeply in those now so is properly out and sleeps for up to two hours.
DD went nap free today with no issues, because she’d had a nice big lie in in the morning (my mum was loookng after her, and she slept in till nearly 11am!), hoping to get her settled to sleep at 8.30, she’s just starting to yawn in the bath. We can’t do that often though.

DS has just turned 3 and still sometimes naps after a year of “dropping it”. He’s a nicer person after he’s had a nap and bedtime’s not always affected.