When does your 18M nap?

[MoreThanRubies]

I’m organising a large family event at the end of August when DD will be 18 months old and I expect she will be on one nap. What times do/did your DC of this age nap? How flexible were they on this? Trying to avoid scheduling the event over prime nap time! Event is day time in an external venue. Other small children will be present so trying to make things easier for the nappers among them too.

TIA!

Ideally 1-3pm. Naps fine in pram so would just do that

1-3 here too

With DS1 around lunch time.
DS2 stopped napping entirely around 18 months.

usually straight after lunch

12-2

Don't think you can really plan for this. They all nap at different times. My 16 month old naps at 9 till half ten and that's all the sleep she'll do until bed time!
I wouldn't worry too much about it, she'll nap when she naps, and one day out of routine won't hurt.

Neither of mine napped at 18 months

12-2 here as well

12.30- 3pm but he could flex an hour or so either way with no issues. I could have kept him up until 2ish if needed. He never napped in the pram so don't bank on that!

I reckon you can plan for them to nap after lunch since that’s a standard schedule for a child that age and what nurseries all tend to do. Some 18MOs might have already dropped their nap but I think that’s fairly unusual, some might nap at different time, after all they’re all different, but the majority of young toddlers will be having some sort of after lunch sleep.

Most children that age will be sleeping for an hour or two between 12pm-3pm.

It might be easier to schedule it starting for 2 or so and then people can drive over and their kids can hopefully nap in the car. That's what we try to do for stuff like this.

Depends on wakeup, sometimes my DD naps 11-1 sometimes 12:30-2:30. I’d just schedule it after 2pm, should be fine.

11-1 here, sometimes even earlier!

Neither of my little darlings did by 18 m. Friends whose children did still nap usually went down after lunch.

As previous posters have said naps usually take place in the 12-3 window for children on 1 nap a day.

DD often caves at 11am! She can last from 1pm til bedtime though. She does sometimes do 12-2 or 1-3, but 1-3 makes a 7pm bedtime hard.

Very roughly, 12:00-14:00 in nursery, 13:15-14:45 at home. Pretty flexible.

First may well have still been on two naps at that age, not at all flexible (although I can't remember the times now).

12-2. But will go an hour earlier or later if we need to be somewhere.

At 18 months, mine was usually asleep by between 12:30 and 13:00 and slept for maybe 1.5-2h. He wouldn’t sleep before 12:30 but if it got pushed to 13:30 or 14:00, he’d be okay, it’d just need to be short with a slightly earlier night.

When she’s at the Childminder’s and doing her impression of a model baby/toddler she naps 12.30-2 ish without fail, sometimes to 2.30

In the real world when she’s with me, it absolutely depends - I aim for the same sort of time ie after lunch, but I can never really predict if it’s going to work, yesterday she would not go down at all then flaked out for a danger nap about 3, the other day she randomly fell asleep in the morning.

She copes ok either way really she’s never needed a strict routine, but a late nap does mean a later bedtime usually and if she doesn’t sleep enough in the day or gets really overtired she’ll be happy enough in the day but then wake up a lot at night. For a special event I wouldn’t worry too much about it, she might nap on me or in her pram there or she might not, but I’d sort of have to psych myself up for it to impact bedtime one way or another.

Depending on the event I’d probably go for late afternoon/ after 3 as most people would want them to be up by then so they will sleep in the evening.

Eldest had started refusing her nap by that age, or would have 20 mins in the car if we did a decent journey. Most of her peers napped straight after an early lunch.

It’s tricky with this age; scheduling something for lunchtime inhibits a nap for most, but then doing an afternoon event means that you’ll be hitting prime witching hour at about 4pm, when the vast majority of toddlers turn into gremlins.

At nursery they napped them 12-2 after a very early lunch. At home we had lunch later so mine napped about 1-4pm at that age, moving to more like 2-4pm from about two onwards. I didn't let her nap after 4pm as it was harder then at bedtime.