No nap? 3y but not coping well

[TS123]

I realize that many 3 year olds do not nap but here is the problem: if DS1 tries to go without it for more than a few days, he starts having meltdowns by 4pm, cannot eat dinner due to fatigue and starts getting more night arousals and night terrors as a result of being overtired. On these days I will put him to bed by about 7:15pm and he will sleep until 6:00 or so. If I insist on a nap, he will not fall asleep until 2:30 or 3pm and I will typically wake him by 4pm. These days he will go to bed at 8:30pm and still be up at the usual 6:00-6:30am and is naturally very tired the next day. Basically, I seem to be damned if I do and damned if I don't and I would like to know what others in this situation are doing. I will add that if my darling sleep resister happens to be in a moving car at noon or 1pm, he will take a well-timed snooze and still go to bed by 7:30pm - which results in the most sleep. Problem is - there is NO way he would sleep at this time if left to himself in his bed (I've tried many times only to find him wide awake at 2:30 and then yawning and rubbing his eyes at 3:00 and finally melting down by 4pm). AAHHHHH!!!! Please, tell me how to get through this. (P.S. He is a complete tyrant when he is tired and it is insufferable -- mainly because of how aggressive he becomes towards his younger brother)

I would just let him have his nap in the car after his lunch and put him to ed at 7.30pm
there's no point trying to make them fall asleep in bed.

We found that when DD dropped her nap (at around 2.9) she still needed one. She is absolutely manic when she is tired, and so teary, etc.
So- we put her to bed earlier where possible.
She started sleeping later in the morning (not always possible, I appreciate)
She was still forced to nap at weekends for a few weeks, because she really needed it!

It has taken a couple of minths, but I think she is mostly used to it now- she sleeps 13 hours a night, but always has IYSWIM. She has always been in bed by 7:30- usually asleep too....

HTH

Can you really tire him out in the morning (swimming always did it for DS, for some reason) and see if that helps him nap earlier?

What does he do if you try to get him to nap at 12 or 1? Does he just lie there for an hour and a half? When DS was in his nap-refusal state I had some success persuading him to lie down and listen to a story CD (without ever mentioning the word "nap") and about 75% of the time he'd have dropped off before the end.

Will he have a sleep in a pushchair? Take him round the block for a couple of times and let him sleep in their for a while. This is what we do with our dd, as she will not sleep in a bed at home during the day. (Will at nursery though....)

I cannot push him around or drive him around to get him to sleep as I have DS2 who naps from 1-3pm. I have tried not mentionning the word nap and just saying quiet time in bed with an audio book but he will still be awake after 1 1/2 hours. Despite this, he is simply exhausted by 3:30-4pm. As for tiring him out -- he goes to preschool 3 mornings per week and those days he is even LESS likely to nap! I cannot possibly do other things like swimming or skating etc with the little one (who is only 1 1/2 y.) Any other suggestions are desperately sought.

Oh, I must add that my situation is complicated by the fact that DS2 is up by 6 or 6:15am and I think that this is part of the reason DS1 will not sleep in. DS2 goes to bed at 7:30pm and if you have 2 kids, you know how hard it is to get both to bed at the same time -- let alone putting the older one to bed earlier!! (DS1 will simply not settle down knowing DS2 is not in bed and trying to do bedtime routine together is ridiculously impossible because DS1 is so hyper and distracted by his brothers' presence). AAAAHHH (again). I feel so frustrated just writing this makes tears well up.