Dropping nap - what are the signs?

[Natasha198]

My DS is 2.5 and for the last few weeks he's been waking before 6 (it was usually 6.30/7 on occasion). He's also been taking ages to go down for a nap, and then at night time doesn't fall asleep for half an hour or so unless he's been at the childminders. When he naps, it's an hour max now, used to be 2 hours or more. Last night he was up quite a lot between 1am-4am, and then woke at 6am. He's currently refusing to nap.

Obviously it could be development changes but just wanted to see if anyone else had similar signs of dropping nap like this? Will keep offering a nap just in case.

Try dropping it on a day you're at home and see how he gets on.

If he makes it through the day, offer an earlier bedtime and see how he sleeps.

If it works, then I'd look at slowly dropping the nap but offer a nap a few times a week to start with, reducing over time until he no longer needs it.

My DS needed a nap maybe once or twice every couple of weeks until age 3.5/4 just to 'catch up'

Thank you! That's really helpful. He had no nap yesterday and went to bed an hour earlier, slept for 12 hours straight with no wake ups. We're in the car around his nap time today so hopefully he'll have a little snooze. Will keep offering it anyway. Good to know that sometimes they still need a few naps a week to top up, as I've got friends kids who just totally drop it! Don't know how they cope!

DS3 had just dropped his although he does still need 20 mins in the car or something a couple of times a week. For us the issue was he was taking ages to go to sleep at night. We’d start bedtime at 7 and he’d be in bed by 7:30 but was taking 2 or sometimes 3 hours to go to sleep and then either sleeping in at the weekends or being really tired on nursery days.

We tried capping his nap to an hour but that started not to work and then he just wouldn’t go to sleep during his nap. He’d just play in bed with his toys so we stopped altogether but it did take a few weeks for him to consistently not have a nap. Initially he’d have a couple of days with no nap and then have a hour one day and then nothing the next day etc… Now he’s in bed by 7:30 and asleep within 15 minutes and sleeping a good 11.5 hours a night. I do know friends who capped the nap at 30-40 mins which helped but given your update sounds like he can cope ok without so maybe do a nap every other day?

I found that it got to a point where he wouldn’t be asleep until 9 or 10 PM if he had had a nap. Even 10 minutes would add 2 or 3 hours to bedtime.

Thanks both, that's good to know. We've just had an awful night though, he was awake from 12am - 3am for absolutely no reason!! Just refused to sleep. We tried everything and in the end we got him in to bed with us. I've told him that it won't be happening again but will have to ask the childminder to cap his nap at 45 mins today. Will be 99% caffeine today!