Naps, Hideous Mornings & Horrific Nights

[marvellousmaplesyrup]

Our 2.8 yr old DS is breaking us. He is our second DS so we should really know what we’re doing, but it’s like this one has ripped up the rule book, eaten it and crapped it out the other end.

He is currently napping for a maximum of 45 mins each day. Over the last 6/7 weeks bedtime has become unbearable. It’s like he’s downed 4 red bull and jumps around the place full of energy. We head upstairs at 7pm for bath, wind down etc. but we struggle to get him to sleep until gone 11pm.

Mornings are equally painful. He is waking up at 4-5am most mornings (last week he slept till 5.45am and I almost wept with joy) full of energy again. So, minimum of 5 hours a night, maximum 6.

We have tried to drop the nap - this results in him falling asleep in his lunch / standing up / on other children at nursery.

Apart from persevering with keeping him away in the afternoons (which seems cruel as he’s so tired) is there anything else we can do?

I’m no expert, just the parent of a nearly 4 year old, so I could be talking nonsense here. Is it possible he’s actually too tired and needs a longer nap, maybe earlier in the day? I find that our worst bedtimes are when DS has had such a big day that he’s exhausted and over stimulated. He should be desperate for bed but he can’t see through the fog of it to calm down.

@Ketryne thank you so much for replying!

You could be onto something there - because he’s up so early in the morning we’ve probably not been adjusting his nap time on the afternoon, thus creating the overtiredness monster. We’ll give that a go. Thank you! 🩷

It might also be worth trying a groclock if you haven’t already, for the mornings? I think that’s quite a good age to introduce it. You set it for around the time they wake up and there’s an owl that changes colour to indicate it’s morning and they can get up. Then you gradually move the time back by 5 minutes every few days. We got one when DS turned 3 and it worked brilliantly for 6 months until he cottoned on to the fact that the owl actually has no real authority and he started ignoring it! We do send him back to his room if it’s before the owl now, but once he’s up he won’t get back into bed, just plays noisily and calls for us every few minutes.