Dropping a nap

luvbug6315 · August 2014

Hi! My LO is 17 months and has never been a good napper-45 mins tops on a Good day. Lately she has started taking two hour long naps in the morning and then refusing her afternoon nap or not wanting it then being super tired and wanting to nap at five which, clearly, I don't want her to nap that late in the day. She usually wakes up in the am around 6 and goes for nap anytime between 9-10. I don't want her dropping her afternoon nap and have thought about pushing morning nap back BUT she literally will start laying on the ground and making snoring sounds when she is tired in the morning and she can't seem to last more than the four hours tops before going down for nap. What the heck is going on?

greyt00 · August 2014

Wow, I think it is awesome that some of these kids lasted so long with 2 naps! When DS1 dropped a nap it seemed like he wanted to drop the afternoon nap and keep the morning one, which is not what I wanted. I would try to push the nap time back, slowly. This is what we did with DS1 and I don't think it was too bad. Can you plan a favorite activity for the time when she gets sleepy, try to keep her awake a little longer? Or plan a change of scenery for that time, play outside or something? It's probably going to be a little rough, but this is what I would try to do.

DawnJM25 · August 2014

Good ideas from PPs. Both of mine went down to 1 nap a day around 17 months give or take. DD would just not go to sleep in the mornings when I put her down, and I got to the point where I forced it more with DS because I was ready to have a chunk of time in the mornings that we could do stuff instead of having smaller windows of time. With both of them I started the long nap at 11:00/11:30 and gradually moved it to 12:30 or 1. It's usually a 2/12-3 hour nap.

pb_bride · August 2014

DS didn't switch until he was 1 week shy of 18m. My suggestion is to make sure your dd is doing something fun/exciting around the 9-10am time period. If she's at home and she is bored, then she'll want to nap. But if she is out at playdate or storytime or playground, she probably will forget she's tired so you can try pushing the nap back a little bit every day.

MrsG071809 · August 2014

DD is in the process of switching to one nap. I actually am glad I read this because I think we also need to work on moving her one nap later. She used to nap around 10am and again around 2, but has pretty much dropped the 2pm one. The problem is when she takes a short morning nap and then like you said by 5pm is tired and cranky again. Some days she'll go down at 1030 or later, and has occasionally slept for 2+ hours, but it's usually more like 10-1130, which is too early and too short for only one nap in my opinion! i'm going to suggest to my mom (who watches her) to work on pushing that morning nap back a little, and see if that helps. On the weekends I usually try to wait to put her down until at least 11 (and usually we're out doing something so it's not too hard to do), and she often takes better naps, so now it's clicking that there must be something to that!

luvbug6315 · August 2014

Thanks girls! I've been trying to push it back. She is def dropping one nap and is happy on the one nap a day... Nw if I can get it to be at a reasonable time that would be great. We are working in it.

opheliainwaders · August 2014

Pinkie78 said:

Our son went to one nap at 13 months so I think at 17 months she may be ready. I agree about pushing the morning nap back slowly.

Same here. One thing we did the week we transitioned was to make sure there were lots of interesting activities in the morning, because she would nap earlier if we didn't keep her busy.

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