is 16 mo old too young to do 1 nap a day?

carlinlp · May 2009

I'm counting the days until we can get Teagan down to one nap a day. Our kids schedules are horrible right now, no one sleeps at the same time and the second I do get them down, Ty walks through the door in the afternoon. Some days I have all of 3-5 minutes of quiet and it's driving me mad. With summer coming, it will only get worse. Our schedule is so restricting because Teagan's long nap is the in morning and Taryn's nap is in the afternoon. This gives me about 2 hours inbetween and of course everyone needs lunch then and it doesn't leave me with a lot of time to go do anything. I'd love to move Teagan to one nap a day for summer but do you think that 16 mo is too young? At this point I feel like he still needs his morning nap and would be miserable without it, even though I really, really want to transition to an afternoon nap so it would align with Taryn's and we could get out of the house in the mornings this summer when it is slightly cooler. I can't expect Ty and Taryn to stay inside all summer long but I don't want Teagan to suffer being tired either....ugh!

Has anyone not only tried to transition to one nap but also move it to another time of day? How did it work? Any tips?

ali-1411 · May 2009

I think its probably too young but maybe it depends more on how long he sleeps at night, and when he wakes up in the morning. If he wakes up early around 6 or 7, then he's probably going to need a morning nap. But if you can get him to sleep till 9, then maybe he'd be fine?

I have no idea how you would do it though. My kids don't take bribes when it comes to sleeping

abbysmom1005 · May 2009

Is he still sleeping well during both nap times? We moved Abby to one nap a day at 14 months when she started not taking both naps well. She would not show her normal tired signs until around 11am (instead of the normal 10am ish). She would then sleep for 2-3 hours and not wake until after lunch time which would throw off the whole day. The she would not take her afternoon nap (which was normally around 2pm) but would be exhausted by 5-6pm.

We started off slowly trying to push back her morning nap, so it became an afternoon nap. Started with pushing it back to 11:30, leaving it there for a week or so, then pushing it to noon (again leaving it there a week or so), etc. Until we were eventually at 12:30/1pm. She had this naptime for quite a while and it slowly (over a year or more) got pushed back to 2pm, which is when she naps now.

Deltadee · May 2009

I don't think it's too young but from what I ready - it depends on the child. DD is 15 months old and is watched by a nanny with her cousin, who is the same age. Her cousin dropped to one nap over a month ago so now they are on different schedules. But, it's very clear that DD definitely still needs two naps and is very cranky without.

A&R2006 · May 2009

I don't think it's too young. Claire only takes one nap a day during the week at daycare - her class is the 12-20 month olds, and they just do one nap from around 12:30 to 2:30. On the weekends she still takes two naps, but I think that there is so much going on at school that she's able to skip her morning nap. She also sleeps about 12 hours at night (from 7 to 7).

I don't have any advice on the transition since they did it for us at school, but I do think it's possible.

MrsBeckO · May 2009

I agree with Ali - I think it depends more on how/when he sleeps at night.

Sydnee is 15 months old and I think she is trying to drop a nap. Rather than waking up at 6am and napping 9-11 and 2-330 like she used to, she's been waking up at 8, napping 10-12 and then maaaaybe napping 30 minutes in the 3 o'clock hour. The days she fights her afternoon nap are h.a.r.d. so we were just talking about ways to consolidate her naps.?

I am going to start getting her out of the house more in the morning to keep her busy and entertained, then eating lunch a little earlier (11ish) and putting her down right after lunch to see how she does.

?

libbyann · May 2009

Is there any way you could gradually move Teagan's long nap to the afternoon? I have no idea how you would go about this or anything, but maybe having him and Taryn taking a long nap at the same time would help you out.

carlinlp · May 2009

He takes a good morning nap "almost" every day. But here lately his afternoon nap is hit or miss. It's either long or super short (15-20 min). But if he does that he is super cranky by the time 5 pm gets here. It seems like I did the same thing as abbysmom with taryn, pushing it back a bit. I'm just afraid he needs two in one day still. Oh, and he sleeps from 8:30 pm to 7:00 or 7:30 am. We've always put our kids down a bit later so we can have more family time and they sleep longer during the day. But I don't want to short him, you know?

Kim777 · May 2009

We are going through the same thing. I thought he would gradually just be able to stay up longer in the morning, which would indicate to me that he was ready to drop that nap. But no, he still wants to nap 1.5-2 hours in the morning and then fights his afternoon nap. So I have no idea what to do. I'm contemplating trying to keep him up, do lunch around 11-11:30 and then down for a nap. Maybe we'll try that for a few days and see how he does? I don't have any advice, just commiserating.

joelle&joseph · May 2009

DS moved himself to 1 nap a day around 12 months. He sleeps from 8pm-7am and then naps from 11:30-1:30 or 2. We let him tell us when he wants to sleep and that has worked out well because he LOVES to take his nap. Sometimes I ask him if he is ready and if he says no 15-30 minutes later he will come to me and say nap, nap.

I would try to move his morning nap 15-30 minutes later for a few weeks and see how he does. I would think that his short afternoon naps would be the sign that he is ready for just 1 nap a day.

Taytee · May 2009

Maybe for everyday, but certianly you should be able to get away with it more days than not. DD was forced to 1 nap a day at that age - 3 days a week at Daycare. At home she still often wanted or needed 2 a day. She did go down a tad earlier at night on days she went to "school".

nanann · May 2009

Elena moved at 14 months, and I just got Julia to move to 1 afternoon nap a day in the past month, so right at 16 months. So no, definitely don't think its too early.

Julia we just kept busy in the mornings and she was almost forced to stay up. Worked well. She now sleeps a little longer in the mornings too, so added bonus.

I also was getting tired of just having a couple hour lunch-time period where both kids were awake to do errands. Of course, as soon as I moved Julia to the 1 long afternoon nap, Elena dropped hers completely. *sigh*

kellenickle · May 2009

A&R2006:
I don't think it's too young. Claire only takes one nap a day during the week at daycare - her class is the 12-20 month olds, and they just do one nap from around 12:30 to 2:30. On the weekends she still takes two naps, but I think that there is so much going on at school that she's able to skip her morning nap.

This is what happened with us - M takes one nap during the week, at daycare. Depending on what's going on on the weekend, she will sometimes take 2 naps, but they are shorter. If we're busy and she's distracted, she'll still take one. She's been doing it since about 12 months - I was kinda worried about her being too young, but it has worked for her.

Emer · May 2009

DD moved at 14 months because we went on vacation and would only nap once while we were there (for a week) and then never went back to two once we were home. I think it was pushing it for her, but after a month or so, she was completely adjusted and I think it worked out well.

JessHeath · May 2009

I don't think so. DS will be 16 mo tommorrow and he is pretty much at 1 really long nap a day. This is fairly new (as in last week), but it seems that is what he gravitates to. He won't fall asleep in the AM like he used to (his AM nap was around 9:30) he'll just lay there for a few minutes then start to try to crawl out of his crib - which I don't want him to learn how to do. So I've moved it back to 11AM and he'll sleep for 2 or 3 hours. We are going to have to push it back even more because he'll be in preschool from 9 - 12:30 3 days a week in September so I have to get him ready for that!

Most of my friend's children are down to 1 nap by now. So I don't think it is too early at all. GL getting everyone on a good schedule!!

Want a personalized experience?

is 16 mo old too young to do 1 nap a day?

Re: is 16 mo old too young to do 1 nap a day?

Choose Another Board

Search Boards