Is my 19mo ready to drop his nap?

[TheBerry]

My 19mo has been resisting his nap lately.

Usually he’s very good, and will lie down and go to sleep without fuss for his nap and at bedtime.

Now, he’s just crying and refusing to sleep at his nap time. He won’t even have a nap in his pram on a walk!

He’s never been a child to “request” a nap, and rarely shows signs of tiredness - I’ve just put him to bed at what I think are the right times for his age. So, if I stopped offering him a nap now I might not know if actually he was tired and did want a nap.

What do you think? Is 19mo old enough to drop the nap, or is it just a phase?

I had this a couple of months ago with my now 21 month old. He’s now back to napping a couple of hours at lunchtime. It’s probably a phase!

Nursery said at the time it would be too young for DS to stop napping. And obviously he carried on napping perfectly for them when he was there.
Toddlers are weird and wonderful creatures aren’t they?!

My daughter started dropping hers at this age. I was very resistant to it and still put her in her cot at the right time every day for weeks but she just played. I gave up altogether at 23m and she never napped again even on long car journeys!

Mine has just come through the other side of a few weeks of nap refusal, he's 20 months so I think it must be a phase! He's back to napping 2-3 hours at lunchtime and going down without a fight

Seems a little young, do they get enough sleep at night? My DD is 2 and sleeps 2 hours in the day still.

I’m not sure tbh. Typically he’ll sleep 10.5 or 11 hours at night, and maybe 1.5 hrs for his nap.

Occasionally he’ll have a mega nap of over 2 hrs, but then often won’t want to go to sleep at bedtime.

I wonder if he just has fairly low sleep needs.

I’ll keep offering the nap.

Toddlers are amazingly unique little creatures!

There is no magic age to ‘drop’ naps, as an adult there are days i need a nap and go to bed at 9pm and days I’m up from 6am til midnight without so much as a seated meal.

So many factors come into play when we think about sleep and whilst we create routines and sleep habits to promote growth, no two days are ever truly identical and it’s ok to be flexible.

My own mini human stopped regularly napping at 2, she’s now 2.5 and a 30 min nap can ruin bedtime by up to 5 hours, and then has a knock on for 2-3 days! But sometimes she’s exhausted at 2pm and keeping her awake just seems cruel, so she naps if she needs and we adapt what time we start the bedtime routine to suit. The routine stays the same but the time differs in line with what she needs that day…she has no concept of time anyway 🤷🏼‍♀️

This approach to sleep is what Iv used with my older girls too, they’re 16 and 13 and from age 11 neither have had ‘bedtimes’ but they have to be in their rooms and quiet from 9pm, tvs/phones off by 10 and then either sleep or reading. And il admit i haven’t had to ‘enforce’ bedtime with either of them for over 2 years…they just know how to wind down and go to sleep when ready.

I guess my comment is really to reinforce it’s ok to do what your child needs on a day by day basis if a strict time based routine isn’t working anymore. What’s most important is keeping calm and reminding yourself that whatever challenge you are facing won’t last forever. In the moment that’s hard, but pick your battles and reflect on something you’ve already overcome and remind yourself that ‘this too shall pass’ and in a few weeks/months/years THIS will be the moment you’re looking back on to remind yourself of what you overcame.