Should I force my two year old to sleep in the afternoon?

[Adriana87]

Previously, especially when he was attending nursery, my son slept in the afternoon. When he's at home, sometimes he skips this nap but since the lockdown he's been doing this on a more regular basis. You can see on occasions how tired he is, especially as he starts to misbehave, but after an attempt to put him to sleep or him just chilling on the iPad for a bit, he gets his second wind and is somewhat back to normal.

Problem mainly comes towards the evening when he gets extra tired and acts up a bit, thought it's only for a short while. My question is, is it okay for him to being slipping his nap? Should I force it?

My DS is 2 and has dropped his nap of his own accord, we tried to keep putting him down but it was just upsetting everyone. We still have a moany period between 5pm - 7pm but we just use that as quiet time or garden time to burn off energy.
He did choose to have a nap on the sofa yesterday (first time ever) so we let him but bed time was hard work. Do whats best for you and your family!

How do you force someone to sleep?

We have 2 ways to get our almost 2yr old to sleep, car or pram......thats it. Its been fun in the rain in lockdown

Why would you force them to nap? My 2.4 year old is not napping most days now. Thought it was just a normal transition never occurred to me to get him to try to nap.

I wouldn't "force" him to sleep - I'm not sure you could do that anyway!

My kids have all had afternoon naps until a few months before they started school. If they were at nursery then they just napped because that was their routine, whilst at home I was more flexible. If we were out, or there was something going on at home then we'd skip the nap. If I wanted them to nap then I laid down with them on the bed and answered all of their objections with "we don't have to nap, just lie here for 10 mins without speaking. If you are bored then you can think about all the things you'd like to do this afternoon." Without fail, they all went to sleep within 15 mins or so, which I took to mean they were tired enough to nap.

Not sure how you can force a nap! My similar age boy is more or less the same. At the moment he is skipping the nap for a couple of days, then day three it catches up with him and he just falls asleep on my lap at lunchtime. Unless we go out in the car for some reason, in which case he sleeps. We try and do something active in the grumpy period and make sure he eats enough. Generally I assume this is just part of moving towards dropping his naps altogether.

When I say force it's usually a case of keeping him in bed regardless of the attempts to get out and the crying. After an hour or so he'll eventually fall to sleep.

Can he not just have a 20 minute power nap later on? That's what mine did when he started to drop his nap. I wouldn't try for an hour to get a child to nap, no.

If it takes an hour to get him to sleep, and he's upset, I would say he doesn't need it!

Most kids drop the nap between 2-3 years old. Mine had a couple of months of being a bit grumpy from 5-6pm and going to bed half an hour earlier before he adjusted but I would never "force" a kid to have a nap. Seems like such a waste of both your time and sets him up to resist sleep at night too.

I think he's telling you he doesn't want a nap. My youngest was just under 2 when he dropped his nap. If he starts to struggle later on I usually take him outside in the garden and that usually wakes him up.