For the past month or so DS has been giving us the hardest time napping on the weekends. At daycare he consistently naps every day from 12:30-3:30pm or so. (He goes right to sleep with the other kids.) We're usually busy on the weekends & end up pushing his nap later - usually 1:30 or so, but this was never an issue until recently. Now there are some days we try to get him to sleep for over an hour & he just wants to run around the house & goof around. Dh & I also want to nap & we try to lay down together with him & this doesn't always work either. The whole afternoon gets messed up then since if he does fall asleep it's at least 3pm or later, and he sleeps until 5-5:30 - which pushes dinner & bedtime... Yesterday we gave up & just skipped the nap altogether - DS was literally falling asleep in his chair at dinner by 6pm..
I think trying to keep to the daycare's earlier nap schedule on the weekends will help a lot, but any other tips? He obviously really needs to sleep & is super cranky if he doesn't nap. I just don't know what to do anymore. I'm kind of worried too since DD will be arriving in about a month, I won't have an hour or two to play games to get DS to nap... If I'm alone with both of them I have no idea how I'm going to deal with getting DS to nap & a newborn....
Re: Difficulty napping on the weekends (2 yr old)?
What happens if you just put him in his room and let him be? Does he take that long even if you ignore him? I found that continuing going back in my son's room to remind him to go to sleep was 100x worse then just letting him work it out himself.
My son is in a bed and when we switched him in January he had a few weeks where he tested gettting in and out of bed and it took him over an hour to fall asleep, but we just let him be and he'd eventually go to sleep. Now he's asleep in less then 10 minutes every day.
We also stick to a nap routine which includes us reading 2-3 books in bed with him and then leaving a few books for him to read to himself. I found telling him that it was quiet time as opposed to nap time helped as well.
Can you put a baby gate up at his door or a latch to keep him from running around the house?