Naptime advice
ArcticFox
member
I desperately need naptime advice. I've been getting a lot of criticism, and I rarely get help with the kids, so I need some constructive help.
DD is 2 years+2 months, her schedule is:
7:30-8:30 - wakes up
2-4pm - naptime
10pm - bedtime
However, she loves to sleep in late. I try to have her up by 8 at the latest. She also generally likes to sleep past 4pm, but if she does, then she goes to bed at like 10:40 (even if she only sleeps til 4:10). If I wake her before 4pm, she is MISERABLE and cranky.
Also, if I get her up a lot earlier - or like when we had the time change, she was melting down at noon, and I need to be at preschool picking up my 4.5 year old, and then it means I can't ever go to lunch or even make it through lunch for that matter.
Any suggestions? The day after Xmas, I accidentally overslept with her til 9am, so then I got rid of her nap that day because I certainly wasn't going to put her down at 3/3:30pm. She slept about 8:30pm-8am, but she was cranky in the evening from missing her nap.
And I have tried everything to get her to take her nap earlier - lullaby, white noise, lavender, milk, rocking her to sleep. So I'd love any help!
ETA - I also do a big routine for bedtime - snack, bath, stories, and then everything I do for her nap. I'm desperate to get her to bed earlier, I'm about to lose my mind over her late bedtime.
Re: Naptime advice
Greyson is a great napper so I can't speak from my own experience. He wakes up between 7:30-9 depending on our noise level getting ready for work vs. sleeping later on the weekend. He will take a nap from 1/2-4/5 and then is back in bed by 8pm.
But with my niece, my dad watched her a lot during that age and he would give her lunch and then tell her it was quiet time. She didn't have to sleep but she had to lay down and be quiet. He would even put the TV on with very low volume and then she would end up falling asleep for a few hours.
Her nap time doesn't sound like the problem IMHO it is her later bedtime. I think Greyson would stay up till 9 or 10 if we let him but he would be cranky and his other sleep schedules would be way off.
Maybe instead of changing her nap routine you focus on bedtime.
DD's schedule
7am wake up
2-4ish nap
8pm bedtime
I think she needs an earlier naptime because most kids their age do nap earlier. She has the later naptime bc of DH's schedule when I work. I have been gradually getting her earlier now that I am off on maternity leave.
I can not even imagine having her awake until 10 at night. Not so much for her - because sometimes she is awake and talking/singing in her bed until 9:30 or so, but for you. Especially bc you do it so much on your own - you need a break! If you put her down for bedtime earlier - even say 9pm, what would happen? I would just do it for a week straight, even if she yells and screams, or even if she is just happily playing in there like dd does, it gives you some time. I don't know about other people, but there are plenty of nights where I am literally counting down the minutes until her bedtime. I would die if it was 10pm. Good luck!
Yep - just put her in bed earlier.
My kids have been on a wacky schedule the past month...but before that it was similar to yours...up at 8:30/9, nap from 2:30-4:30, bed at 9/9:30pm...now, since Evan needs to get up for school...we'll be getting him up at 7:30am, nap will be from 2-4 and then we'll be putting him in by 8:30pm (or earlier if it looks like he's still not getting enough sleep) I wake him up from naps if he goes past 4:30.
I think with a little tweaking you'll be able to get them down earlier and have more time to yourself at night. Good luck!!!
I've tried an earlier bedtime... she fools around for even like an hour. I have also tried rocking her for like 45 minutes.
Yea.. I'm over it. And yes, I am on the verge of losing my mind.
Nest Bio ~ ~ Baby Food Blog
Ditto to PP- I think she's cranky because she needs more sleep at night- the type of sleep she gets at nap time and the type of sleep she gets at night are different- I wouldnt keep her up past 9 and if that is an issue with your DH being able to see her- I would tell him to change his routine...
There was a period of time when DH wouldnt see L at all because he was going to bed at like 630..and if he wanted to see him- he came home early and then worked from home after L was in bed...
Now, I don't have a kid as old as yours so take this with a grain of salt, but I would be putting her in earlier and as long as she isn't up their screaming crying, I wouldn't care that she was still awake. Sometimes DD is up for an hour after when we normally put her to bed, singing or talking to herself, but I figure that she just needs that time to wind down.
I agree with this. Sometimes DD will talk to herself or sing for awhile after I lay her down. If DD isn't screaming, have you tried just letting her play in her bed and put herself to sleep?
Wow I feel like I could have written this post myself. We are having the exact same issues right now except ours was even worse because DD was lacking a routine for naptime (DH is a SAHD and never established a daytime routine for her and would just let her nap whenever she was ready and usually it was while watching the wiggles or caliou and on weekends while I was home with her or during the week if my Mom watched her we usually could not get her to sleep without a fight and lots of tears.) After DD #2 was born I said we have to help her with her sleep issues. Nightime was a nightmare. When I was nursing I would nurse her to sleep and then carry her into her bed, which I know is a big no-no but it worked for us so I stuck with it. When I stopped nursing her I needed something to replace that part of our routine with so I started laying with her in our bed (after our stories) until she fell asleep and then carry her into her bed..but this would many take more than an hour for her to fall asleep, which then got me downstairs some nights at almost 11 pm and left me no time to do things I needed to do before getting ready for work the next day and going to bed. At the end of my pregnancy with Callie this got to be too hard for me to do. So I started taking her into her room halfway through our story time and finishing it with her laying in her bed, shortly before Callie was born. Hoping she would learn to fall alseep on her own without someone laying with her. We were still struggling with this and she was laying there not falling asleep for hours..sometimes not till 11 or midnight and I was stuck in her room with her for that long.
Out of desperation for some help I have started reading "The No Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers" and it has been a Godsend!! She now has being going down every day between 1 and 1:30 for naps and is asleep usually before we even finish the first book we're reading her. AND she now will say to us "is it my naptime?" around that time because she can feel her body needing sleep. So due to this change we were able to make bedtime earlier because she's up from her nap earlier and she's been waking earlier in the morning which keeps her on schedule for naps. Nighttime is still not down to being as short as we'd like but it is SOOO much better and she has been asleep many time now by 9:15-9:30, which for us is AMAZING. So if you have a little time each day that you could start reading a book, I highly recommend this one! It really has taught me a lot and helped so much and I'm not even halfway through it yet...and a very slow reader.
Basically, I think she needs to drop the nap..
- it has nothing to do with DH's work schedule.. I don't wait for him to get home to put her to bed.. I pretty much never see him so that is a totally other issue.
- I have tried putting her to bed an hour earlier all the time. Never worked.. Part of the problem is she fools around for like an hour and then sometimes she'll try to get out of her room (and the door doesn't click shut, so I can't do anything about that), or she'll cry, so it's not like I can go to sleep or take a shower.
Nest Bio ~ ~ Baby Food Blog
I don't understand why you would drop the nap after saying in the beginning how she was very cranky when she missed her nap. Also a kid that is taking a two hour map doesn't sound like they are ready to drop a nap, at least in my experience when I nannied.