2 year old sleep, ran out of ideas

[1990shopefulftm]

2 year old has had split late nights for a good 3 months and nothing we ve tried seems to work, he's on the waiting list to see the paediatrician due to delays in some areas but medically no one else will do anything to help us at the moment.

We generally stopped naps entirely a couple of months ago but its made no difference, he either goes to sleep at 11pm and might just sleep 7 hours if we re lucky or he goes to sleep at 8-10pm and wakes for 2-3 hours at night.

His language/understanding is so delayed that if we tell him its sleep time he doesn't get it or just laughs at us. Sleep training won't work out seemingly as he's not crying, he just wants to play in his room. So really have no ideas left

Hi op,

What was the full routine with the nap and what is it now? Eg. Start of the day, nap, bedtime, regular time for night wakes?

My guess would be you have a low sleep needs child anyway but dropping the nap has caused the split night.

Its hard to comment without knowing how much sleep he gets but once they turn 2 the average is 10-13 hours of sleep in 24hrs. He probably just needs a bit less than this. I imagine the earlier bed time is out of sync with his circadian rhythm.

Hi,
The night wakes completely vary anything from 2am to 5am starts, its completely random.
His bedtime is around 7 but it can sometimes take an hour for him to settle if not more.

For example last night/this morning he fell asleep at 7.45pm, woke at 2.45 am and absolutely nothing has got him to settle until 6.45am today so about 7 hours sleep.

His routine used to be 8am wake up, 1-2pm nap and then 8pm/9pm bedtime but it just stopped working in December suddenly, when we ve tried naps since he just wants to play/jump on his bed etc.

He could very well be low sleep needs generally now but he barely sits down apart in the 14-15 hours he's awake on a good day so I don't know how he's not exhausted.

Did he used to sleep all the way through before this change? Or were there night waking but he just went quickly back to sleep?

I’ve just started reading ‘still awake’ by Lyndsey Hookway, I’m only a few chapters in but it seems to have to good ideas on a holistic approach to sleep. It is specifically aimed at toddlers onwards. I picked it up from my local library.

We have recently started to get some better sleep with 18mo. We started waking him as early as we felt we could manage long term (for us this is 7am but you could do 5.30/6am if you can handle that) and we stick with this wake time no matter what time he goes to sleep. We also cap his nap at 45mins-1hr but obviously that won’t matter if yours isn’t napping anymore.

Most importantly (I feel) is that for about a week we didn’t even attempt bedtime until we were seeing real signs of tiredness, sometimes this wasn’t until 9/10pm but after a few days it settled at around 8pm, and he had gone down from taking 1hr+ to go to sleep to now he has his eyes closed in about 5mins and is fully asleep in around 15mins.

We found that he would have a split night and be awake 12-2am then I’d let him sleep as much as he wanted and he would be up around 8/9am and then he wouldn’t nap so I’d put him to bed exhausted at 7pm expecting a good sleep but by midnight he was up to 10hrs sleep in the last 24hrs and would have another split night. Hope that makes sense!

Used to sleep all the way through and had done for well over a year.

That makes sense, we ll work on bringing forward his wake up time to 7am regardless of what happens from tommorow. Before he stopped napping I d been capping them for a while.

OK so if he previously slept all the way through 12hrs with a 1 hr nap, 13hrs total, he definitely isn't low sleep needs. Before 2 I think average sleep is 11-14hrs in every 24. So yours us on the higher end.

My guess is he actually still needs to nap but probably just a short one, like 30 mins, and go to bed later. The split night suggests he isn't ready for no nap yet. Sounds like he's just gone into hyper mode, mine does this if he has a late bedtime and it ends up taking as long to go to sleep as it can if he is really undertired.

Will he sleep if you drive in the car or go for a walk with the push chair? Might be you need a strategic trip to the supermarket or something to force a little sleep.

I'd be aiming for 6:30-7am wake, nap 1-1:30, bed 8-8:30. I appreciate this might be hard to implement but I would start with the nap and see if the rest slots into place.

I think 2 year old sleep is tricky because they do still need a nap but it has to be precisely the right length or everything goes to s**t.

Also another vote for 'Still Awake' by Lyndsey Hookway. Most online sleep websites seem to say children should nap 2 hours a day until they're four and sleep 12 hours at night, I guess because they're pedalling a lie to get you to pay for their services. That just isn't true on the ground with children I know irl. Lyndsey Hookway's suggestions are much more realistic I find.

I can't drive but have tried walks with the pram which used to work but he's seemingly too interested in whats around him on walks these days to sleep out and about.

We don't currently know why he's got some delayed development so I don't know whether standard two year old expectations are appropriate (really he was quite hyper before the sleep issues but would just be calm a bit before bed time) , but I ll definitely be working on that wake up time tommorow, see if he d nap then go from there.

How's it going @1990shopefulftm ?

My 2 year old needs very little sleep. A good night would be 8.30pm-5.30am with 1 wake. No nap.
Bad nights can be 10pm-5am with wakes every 1-2hrs.

Nursery say he’s super active and never seems tired when their either.
He’s never slept though.

Forced the 7am wake ups and so far he's still not going to sleep earlier but the past two nights haven't been split ones (he didn't want a nap in the afternoon), which is something.

However, napped in the car at 2 today which was awful timing so expecting a very bad night tonight as he's still awake.

Oh that sounds very positive. Sounds like he is ready to stop napping largely then

Have you ruled out ear-ache, cold room, worm infestation or teething pain?
Can you leave a red night light on so in the night he can awaken, drink some water and rest until sleep comes again.

He saw audiology a few weeks ago and no concerns with his ears, he's just two teeth away from the full set seemingly but no sign he's in pain or any signs of any other illnesses at all.

It was really just waking and wanting to play that was happening and he won't stay in bed to rest, as we live in a semi detached not intervening really isn't fair on the neighbors either. He can turn his own light on as he's ridiculously tall so wasn't a fan of his nightlight when he knows he can put a proper light on.

Yes definitely leaning towards avoiding naps and seeing what happens.