Nap-dropping hell

[delilahsq]

Hello,

Posting on here as at the end of my tether and desperately need advice!

Our 2 year, 7-month old daughter has just dropped her lunchtime nap, following the advice of a sleep trainer. We sought help from her as our daughter was waking a lot in the night and taking about an hour to go to sleep (from 7pm), as well as having frequent night terrors.

The night terrors have thankfully subsided since dropping the nap and we put her down as close to 7 as possible and she usually drifts off fairly quickly. She is still often waking in the night, though not at all as much... However the main issue is she has had the worst, most awful tantrums ever since we have dropped her nap - for the last couple of weeks. She refuses everything, throws things, screams, shouts, gets absolutely furious... I'm talking pretty much back to back tantrums. It's insufferable and I am also heavily pregnant and so exhausted. Very hard not to lose it and we have a few times had to send her to her room.

It seems to us like she's insanely tired and that's the route of the issue but we've been told by an expert to ditch the nap... we tried a half hour nap at lunch and the trainer still said she was taking too long to fall asleep so we even got rid of that.

Has anyone had any similar experiences and does anyone have any advice - please? You would be doing us a huge favour! So confused about what to do.

Thank you x

Hi. I remember this with my now 4 year old. Dropping their nap was tough going in terms of their emotions and we had a few weeks where they would nap on some days and not on others.

I would say though that if she was taking an hour to go to sleep with the nap and you were trying at 7pm would it be worth having a brief nap (capped at 20mins) and a later bedtime for a while until they seem more ready to get rid of the nap entirely? I think as a society we get quite fixated on the fact that kids should be in bed at 7pm but actually for many this to too early and they don't have the sleep pressure. Might be worth a go...sometimes it's about changing our expectations around sleep rather than making the child fit our plans.

We also used to have quiet time for our son. He'd be in his room listening to audio books/we would read to him etc. when his nap usually was. This helped us ride out the month or so where he struggled the most with no nap at all.

Good luck!

Surely just keep the nap and aim for falling asleep to happen at 8 instead? It sounds more work dealing with the tantrums than having a nice nap break and a fun afternoon that is just an hour longer than before?

IMO they aren't ready to start dropping the nap until they won't go down for the nap til after 1:30, it is capped at like less than 30 mins and bed time is post 9pm.

When my ds started dropping the nap at 2 and 3 months he would sleep a solid 11-13.5 hours at night, which he had never done previously, and then fall asleep in the car at around 10:30am the next day if we went anywhere. It was impossible for it to be an every day thing. Now at 2 and 8 months he probably would be able to do without but nursery are a pita about it. So we have 3 nights a week where he sleeps at 9:30. It was annoying but now we're used to it I can't imagine how we used to get him home, fed, washed and asleep for 8 previously.

The things is that the sleep trainer will be very focused on her sleep and not really care about her other behaviour. So if the tantrums are worse than the poor sleep (sounds like they are?) then they won't have your best interests in mind. Personally I'd let her have a nap if she wants to and maybe push bedtime a bit later.

I've always understood that it's pretty typical for bedtime to drift a bit later first before they're ready to drop a nap. Overall sleep needs decrease and they are able to be awake for longer, but not long enough to fully be rid of naps, and this happens with every nap transition. Then when they are ready to drop the nap then bedtime gets earlier again, and at first might be earlier than target time. So if she's generally happier when she naps but takes a long time to go to sleep then just do bedtime later for a while.

So for example for a while you may need bedtime to be 8pm or even 9 instead of 7 and cap the nap gradually shorter. Then when she's ready to drop it you may need to bring bedtime all the way to like 6pm until she can make it through the whole day to a 7pm bedtime without a nap.