Naps - or lack thereof

[laraeo]

My DS is 11 months and lately has been refusing all naps unless we're in the car. When he's in his cot he's not crying or fussing - he's mostly playing and making noises. How long do you leave them in their cot before finally giving in to the fact that they're just not going to nap? I've left him for up to an hour and felt pretty guilty about it.

I leave mine for an hour before I give up too. I go in every 5 mins to lay him down though.
What's he playing with?

He generally plays with the soft toys at the end of his cotbed. He's put down at one end and the toys are at the opposite end. Although sometimes he's just sitting at the "sleep" end of the bed bouncing and waving his dummy around. If I go in he gets all wound up thinking he's getting out. Maybe I need to go in more often and get him used to the idea that just because I'm there doesn't mean he's getting out. Glad to know I'm not the only one.

Take the toys out of the cot.

I think they go through phases where they won't settle easily but then a few days later go back to doing it no problem.

Is he having 1 or 2 naps? Might be that he is ready to go down to one but it needs ot be a bit later in the day. Depends when he wakes up in the morning but generally by 18 months they are down to 1 nap after lunch.

I also had soft toys at the bottom of the cot, I'd put them there in the hope that he'd play in the morning for a bit and I wouldn't have to get up at 6am! However, like yours he started messing about at bedtime and naptime so they came out and he soon started getting bored!
What I'd do, id put him down, and say goodnight or something or sleep time, leave the room, go back 1 min later, lay him down say sleep time, go back 2 mins later, then 3 then 4 and so on. That's what I did for a good few weeks.
Good luck, but like kwaker says, it's a phase I think they must all go through, but you know he needs that nap so stick with it

I also would take toys out of cot. Leaving for up to an hour is perefectly fine - my ds has often messed about and wriggled and whinged for thast length of time and then settled to sleep. You know your child best in terms of how sleepy they mare but sometimes they just won't settle and other times babies get into habit of only sleeping in a car etc! My ds 2 is great, sleeps in his cot happily BUT rarely sleeps in the car so it limits my day to working round his naps but my ds1 would NEVER sleep in cot during the day and I would HAVE to time trips in the car with when I wanted him to sleep so then I'd transfer him asleep from car to cot - will he stay asleep if you try that?

I figured it'd come down to taking the toys out of the cot. I also wasn't sure about dropping a nap - right now we aim for 2, 1 in the morning and 1 in the afternoon - it seems he's a bit young for dropping one but you never know. He always wakes up on the transfer from car to inside, ditto from buggy to cot. I don't want to get him in the habit of only napping in the car. Having said that, he napped really well Sunday afternoon but I think that was because he's got a cold. Yesterday we were in the car so he had his nap. We'll see what this afternoon brings when I denude the cot of its toys!

My DS dropped his morning nap at about 12mo. Sleeps like a charm in the afternoon now though - sometimes have to wake him after 3hrs. I held off dropping the morning one because I loved that time to myself, pottering around listening to the radio, but resigned myself to the fact you can't really hold back the tide for very long without it having an effect somewhere, like with the afternoon nap.

Oh, and our DS has been waking really early at the moment - between 5-6am - and we go in and shove a load of books and toys in the cot to buy us a bit more time in bed.

Recommend the NCSS book if you need advice on age and sleep/nap amounts and I think she's written one specifically for naps too. Good luck.