25 mth old - do other toddlers still have lunchtime nap?

[susanita]

My ds is 25 mths old and until about a couple of months ago would settle easily into a lunchtime nap, going down at 1 and getting up at 3. Lately though, he really kicks up a fuss and rare is the day when he goes before 1.30. He does eventually go to sleep but now I'm not sure whether we're forcing it or if he's really ready to drop the nap. He does usually seem genuinely tired, rubbing his eyes etc. He keeps saying 'don't like nap' but then again the other day he said 'don't like chocolate' which is a blatant 'lie'.
At what age do toddlers tend to drop their lunchtime nap?

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DS1 kept up his nap until he was about 3.5! DS2 (25 mnths) seems to be dropping his although he'll have one at nursery and occasionally simply fall asleep somewhere during the afternoon (bless him!)

The nap dropping doesn't seem to be a sudden thing so maybe your DS is in the process of growing out of it. I don't physically put DS2 down for a nap any more as I'm happy that he'll simply fall asleep on the sofa by himself if he needs to. DS1 used to just take himself off upstairs and getinto our bed at this age!

I meant to say that they seem to go through a stage of needing the nap but not wanting it IYSWIM.

I think it varies from child to child. My dd sometimes has a marathon 3 hour nap and then other days doesn't have a sleep at all (she does get v tired thought when she hasn't had a nap)- she is 23 months

They do go through a scratchy patch before dropping the nap entirely, like SoupDragon says. Ours had a lunchtime nap at nursery until nearly 3 and as he approached his third birthday we were having problems getting him to sleep in the week before 9pm. Needless to say, we had long dropped the nap at weekends.
Keep saying to yourself, Susanita, it's a phase, and if you can possibly manage it, don't take him out in the car or buggy from mid afternoon onwards...

i'm having exactly the same prob with my 25 month ds. My problem is that i have to do the school run at 3.45 to pick up dd, if he hasn't slept earlier in the day, i have to sing to keep him awake - not pleasant...

My DS still has his after lunch nap & I would be loathe to let him give it up!! I put him down after lunch - doesn't matter if it is an early or late lunch - today he went down at 2pm and got up at 5.30pm!!!!!!!! I stick to the 7.30pm bedtime and he goes through till 7am - sometimes he'll go down after lunch & go right through to the next morning!!

Ds is 20 months, and sometimes doesn't have a nap at all. By 5pm, both of us are grumpy!! I love his naps, because I get some 'me time' to read or whatever. I find that if I let him run around a lot in the morning, he tends to have a sleep either late morning, or after lunch. Sometimes he goes down well, and others he goes kicking and screaming, even though I know that he is tired. We are in that awful phase of still needing a little sleep to last the day, but not wanting one. I have also noticed that his naps are shoter now, usually 45 minutes. We are lucky on the days that we get 1.5 hours.

My ds will be turning 3 in a couple of months, and he still has a two-hour sleep in the middle of the day. I value this time so much, so I'm glad he's still doing it! He still sleeps between 10 1/2 and 11 hours at night too, so he obviously still needs the rest in the middle of the day. Your little one might still need the daytime sleep, but perhaps he's just fighting it - he may get back into having a nap again, but then again he may not... best of luck.

Just another thought too - as Dizzymummy said, my ds will also have a 3 hour nap in the middle of the day if he's become a bit sleep deprived for some reason, and then sleep for 12 hours that night, until he gets back into his normal pattern. I really think that most kids at this age still need quite a lot of sleep, even if they don't think they do!!

My dd has only given up her afternoon nap in the last few weeks and she was 3 at the start of Feb. Even now if we have had a very active day, like swimming, she will have a dose of about half an hour in the late afternoon (a bit down from the 2 hours she was having). I think she would still nap in the afternoon if I put her to bed, but if she does fall asleep after lunch for any reason she gets up at 5 the following morning, wheras at the moment she is going 12 hours from 7.30pm
I envy all of you who have that 'me time' in the afternoon, but in some ways I like it when ds (14 months) is napping as I get a good stretch of time with dd to do things she likes.

Hi Susanita,
My ds is 28 months. At around 25 months he really started resisting his daytime nap. It started with him saying he wanted to sleep in the big bed (there is a bed in his room) and not in his cot, and of course the moment I put him in the big bed he would get up and start jumping up and down, and not get a wink of sleep. Anyway, over a couple of weeks the situation deteriorated so that he wouldn't sleep at lunchtime, was tired all afternoon and grumpy about going to bed in the evening too. In the end, I decided to be firm about his afternoon nap, so I decided I would give him lots of running about exercise in the morning and I put him in his cot for his afternoon nap and left him there; the first afternoon he cried for 50 mins and the second afternoon he cried for 30 mins and after that he was back into sleeping without a problem. He's now showing signs of not being so tired on some days (probably twice a week) so I don't always insist on a nap, BUT I do love it when he does sleep and I have some time to myself.
Hope that helps, Lorien

My dd is 24 months and still really needs a nap in t he early afternoon but rarely sleeps for more than 45 min or an hour. Maybe he doesn't quite need two hours. What if you tried waiting until 2 and letting him sleep unitl 3. He might be more tired by then and not complain so much? I also don't think there's anything wrong with waking them from a nap if you don't want them to sleep for too long - it seems to help us avoid problems at bedtime. But every toddler is different. If he's clearly tired and grumpy without the nap then you may have to try some different strategies to get him to have at least a short rest.

My ds is almost 18 months and usually has about an hour after lunch at 12.30 ish. If he misses his nap he is moserable (and so am I) by 5 o'clock. He is starting to resist bedtime though which I have put back from 7 to 7.30 and last night, climbed out of his cot in the middle of the night for the 1st time and came into our bed. I would be loathe to give up the afternoon nap completely before 2 yrs old.

miserable even