DS refusing to nap in cot AGAIN

[tinierclanger]

DS (16m) has always been a reluctant napper, but a few months ago he sort of settled and started taking a nice morning nap in his cot, then in the afternoon he would be taken for a walk in pram to sleep.

And now he's just started refusing tp nap in the cot again. He kicks off as soon as we get in the room, it's just hopeless. He IS tired, he looks tired and will go to sleep as soon as we take him out in pram. It's just the cot refusal getting me down. He also seems to be shifting from 2 naps to 1 and it's unpredictable each day which he will need.

Has anyone else been through this? Please tell me eventually he will just start being happy to nap again!

I had something similar when DS went from 3 naps to 2 around 7-8mo. I think it settled in about a week...

DS is all over the place with his naps again at the mo, so you have my sympathies - I find it so hard to keep up and difficult not to get stressed out by it.

I keep reminding myself that, eventually, he won't need daytime naps any more. And you're a lot closer to that than I am (DS is only 9mo).

Thanks IsItMe, that's exactly what I keep telling myself - naps will only last another 18 months or so anyway, so does it really matter if it has to be in the pram?!

It's just the unpredictability as well that's stressful, isn't it? And his protests are massive now - I couldn't just leave him to cry up there.

DS (15 mo) has been through this phase several times - including when he made the 2-1 nap transition. Sometimes I think they don't need the morning nap, in which case I would keep him up until 11am or later and then give him one nap. He is pretty much settled on one nap now apart from when he wakes up at stupid o' clock. At the moment when I give him his cuddle before the nap he says 'No!' and points at the door but after a minute or so of cuddling, he is practically asleep.

Hi artifarti, that's pretty much what I've been doing, pushing him till about 11 or 11.30 on the days he doesn't seem too tired. But to get him in the cot... no! He is enraged, he does the No! and pointing thing but there is yelling, crying, he won't consider listening to a story, if I put him in the cot he will be thrashing around, back arching, all that. It's not the kind of tired little whingeing that he used to sometimes do in the past before drifting off to sleep.

That's helpful to know how you change down to 1 nap. I thought it might be something like that. Stupid o'clock wakes are also a pain for messing up any idea of schedule you can plan a day around. Grrrr.

Am a little reassured that it's not just me who has this problem! We were worried that we might have put DS off reading for life when he got wise to our introducing a little story before naptime and started crying as soon as he saw a book . Now he's cruising and having great fun pulling them all of the bookshelf, so hopefully he's over that now!

It seems to me that DS "gets" the idea of sleep cues, but is having none of them for naptimes. Your dcs sound similar.

It's all a bit hit and miss, I think. DS goes to a CM three days a week and she has a very chilled-out attitude - she just gets on with whatever is planned i.e. if he falls asleep en-route to the playgroup or on the way home or whatever, that's fine. She'll then try and get him down for a second nap later. It's not that easy though when you've been up since 5.30am and are desperate for them to sleep so that you can . It is hard though when they utterly refuse it. We used to just try again later, give up and go out with the buggy or on a few infamous occasions, when all other attempts had failed and his eyes were out on stalks with tiredness, gently hold him down and stroke him for a few minutes until sleep overtook him.

But what do I know? We are currently on sleep regression No. 142!

Well, at least it's nice to know it's not just us! Thanks for all your input.