Help, exhausted 1 year old will not nap!

[mazmack]

I am at my wits end with this! My DD, who is 1, sleeps wonderfully well at night, about 12 hours, will have a late morning/early afternoon nap, but by late afternoon will be yawning and rubbing her eyes and really really tired. If we are out she might fall asleep in her buggy but the slightest thing will wake her up, and then when I try to put her in cot when we get home she gets hysterical. By dinnertime she is too tired to eat and just cries all the way through her bath.

I don't feel controlled crying would work as if i go in there to pat her she just starts screaming more and trying to crawl around her cot..and I wouldn't feel comfortable letting her cry it out as I feel she would just be crying until she makes herself sick, or falling asleep exhausted from being hysterical.

Has anyone else been through this? Any ideas?

She is so sweet tempered and happy if she has even a 25 min late afternoon nap!!

maybe she is getting to the stage where she only needs one nap a day, a long one sometime around lunchtime? it might be that she's just not quite there yet....not quite ready to be awake all morning, but not ready to stay awake til she's had lunch....then needs to sleep late afternoon but too close to bedtime.....just been through this with my dd who is 15 months and we are finally getting to the stage where we routinely do lunch at 11.30, nap 12 til 2, but we had a few months of some days 2 naps, some days 1 but often too early in the day to see her through - happily - until bedtime. If any of that sounds familiar maybe you need to push her late morning nap later if you can, so that she then doesn't need to sleep again. Hope that helps!!!!

Sadly she will not have long naps...45 minutes is generally the longest she will have, but usually only 20-30mins. So, yes, I agree, she NEEDS one long nap, but she just won't have it, she has always had two short naps instead of one long one.

I would LOVE it if she slept 12 until 2!!

Unfortunately if I try to push her nap later she just gets overtired and starts crying too

But thanks, I know what to aim for now, and it helps that you have been through the same thing!