Dropping the Nap

Well ladies.... I'm afraid to report that Owen has decided that napping is not cool.
He hasn't taken more than a 20 minute nap all week.

I love him dearly .......
but he's bugging the crap out of me.

He is cranky all afternoon. He's aggressive. He has multiple melt downs each day.
I KNOW he needs a nap but I can't get him to take one.

I tried pulling it forward - I tried pushing it back.
What do you do when your child clearly needs a nap but refuses?

Could try taking him out for a walk in his pushchair, but I never force her to nap even if she needs to, I just allow some quiet time and put Molly to bed at 6-6.30

When Klara was born Theo's daytime nap routine vanished, for him it was almost as if he felt he would miss out on something if he slept. Missing out on the daytime nap meant he ended up over tired and didn't want to go to bed. We went through multiple melt downs, the kind where he used to arch his back and head butt the floor....it was clear he still needed a nap and after chatting with Holi (thanks Holi) I started putting him to bed at 1pm everyday, first day he cried for about 40 minutes before falling asleep...it was tough and I hated it but day 2 he cried for 20 minutes and day 3 it was about 5 minutes....after a week he just whimpered a little bit and now he usually goes down no problem at all but occasionally we still get a few tears it depends on what he has been doing prior to the nap. Getting the daytime naps back meant his bedtime hour was more of a reasonable time and he still sleeps for 12 solid hours a night.

Overall he is a far happier little boy and I swear we hardly ever have tantrums now!!

At two years old, biologically I would say that he still needs the nap. I would just keep trying, give him a quiet time, lay him down for a certain amount of time, even if he doesn't want to sleep. It could be he is getting some teeth or something (molars?) and it is throwing things off again. Maybe get his ears checked just to be sure there is no infection.

LM hasn't ever refused to nap, but she has had a week or two in a row where she doesn't want to fall asleep at her usual time, or she only sleeps like 40 minutes and wakes up. But with persistence, she does get back into the groove.

I say make a quiet time mandatory, try your best, and hopefully Owen will be back napping very soon!

xxx

Thanks girls -
Georgi, what time does Theo get up each day? Owen wakes usually around 8:30 or 9 so I used to put him down for a nap between 1:30 and 2. I think I may trying pulling the nap forward a good bit and see what happens. Today we had his birthday party and he was CLEARLY exhausted but refused to nap. Finally, I just rocked him until he fell asleep and he slept on my shoulder for an hour. (we haven't done that since he was probably 10 months old!)

Tiff - I hadn't considered the possibility of it being molar related. I have made him stay in his bed every day for 1 full hour since the nap strike began. Thanks for the support!

These kids are smart little cookies aren't they?!!! Just when we think we've got them figured out - they change things up again!

i hope he goes back to sleeping for you. Kyrah is a child that needs a day time sleep, she is an early riser , she wakes anytime from 5 to 7am so she is back down around 12 and sleeps for a good 2 hours and then she is in bed again at 7pm. she never usually refuses either as she is tired, but sometimes if sh eis over tired we occassionally get a tantrum, but she doesnt have the stamina to keep it up as she is too tired lol. Teething does affect Kyrahs sleep patterns though and she has just got 3 of her 4 second molars through.
We are working on a few things with Kyrah at the moment
1- toilet trainig- as she has gone back wards
2- getting her to drink her milk out of a sipper cup not a bottle ( has a bottle at night time and drinks everything else out of a cup- always has)
3- taking her dummy away ( she only has it at sleep times)
so we are slowly workingon these things so i am sooo hoping they dont effect her sleep routine.
good luck

ooh Sparkles! You have a lot going on!!!! For about the last 6 months Owen has been sleeping 12 hours at night at 2 during the day. He just recently shortened his nap to 1 - 1 1/2 hours and will sometimes only sleep 11 1/2 hours at night. It's only been in the last 10 days or so that nap time has really gotten screwed up.

Today was a little better. I put him down an hour earlier than normal. Instead of waiting 5 hours for a nap I put him down after he'd been awake for 4 hours. I also turned on a sound machine and we played pretty hard, although the playing part is not uncommon. He only fussed for a minute when I layed him down - I think he's having some seperation anxiety - which may be the problem. (I just thought of this!) He slept soundly for about 30 minutes and then wimpered off and on for another 30. I got him out of the bed when the hard core crying began. He was in the bed a total of an hour and 20 minutes.

I'm not sure what helped the most but I'm guessing it has something to do with only leaving him up for 4 hours. I'll try again tomorrow to see what happens.

Lucy gets up at 6:30 or so. Wide awake and ready for action (groan). Usually around 11:30-12:00 she starts drooping. Her nap varies from an hour and a half to 3 hours. Then she goes to bed around 8:30. She sometimes talks a little while after she is put to bed, but usually falls asleep quite quickly.

My problem occurs if we are out around 11 am or so and she crashes in the car. Sometimes when I carry her into the house she wakes up enough she won't go back to sleep and then that evening she is a total bear. What we usually do on those occassions is put her to bed early, sometimes she is so grumpy she won't eat anything, and we will put her to bed during dinner. Then when we are going to bed later 10:30 - 11:30 we will wake her up just enough to drink her bedtime bottle then she seems to sleep straight thru and is back on schedule the next day.

OK. So I pulled nap time up to a 4 hour gap from when he first wakes and it has helped. He is not crying when I lay him down but he still only napping for 40 minutes. I still think he needs more than this so I'm going to keep playing with it.
I think my next step is to start waking him up about 30 minutes earlier in the am. That way he will be getting 11 1/2 hours of sleep at night and maybe we can get nap back up to 1 1/2.

great news, at least he is sleeping again and im sure it will become longer again xo

I THINK I FIGURED WHY HE'S WAKING UP!!!!!!

We are running our air conditioner more since it's getting hot! I noticed today that he woke up at the 40 minute mark which just happened to be when the AC came on!!!!!

yay!!! at least you figured it out, i hope it gets back to normal now xoxo

Can you have a loudish fan in his room for white noise,also it's a constant and when the AC kicks in he probably won't hear it over the fan so he'll hopefully get more sleep!

I have a noise machine in his room but today I turned it up a little louder than normal.
He is still asleep!!!! That's ONE WHOLE HOUR PEOPLE!!!!!!

This is huge. He hasn't had an hour long nap in at least 3 weeks! Yipee!!!

SO awesome!!!! That rocks. I totally can relate to waking up when the air conditioner cycles on! LM has a fan in her room to block out the noise and so do we. That is so awesome, I am so happy his nap is going better now!!

Well, I wore that little stinker out this morning and he slept an hour and 10 minutes! He woke up all smiles and that made our afternoon soooo much better. I'm going to keep trying and hopefully Owen wont drop his nap completely just yet!!!!!

Sorry, I didn't respond earlier to this thread; I read it and keep following along with it, but never got around to posting.

Great job, Lou Lou, that Owen seems to be back to napping!!! That's fantastic!!!

We had some days where we couldn't get Kian down for a nap - he just wouldn't fall asleep just play and chatter in his bed. Those days, after trying everything and leaving him in bed for 1 hour, we just skipped the nap and put him to bed a little earlier. We also made sure we didn't go on any car rides in the afternoon, cause then he would fall asleep at an odd time. He was crabby in the evening, cause he was tired --- and clingy. But that's really the exception. He usually sleeps for two hours in the afternoon - even now again that he is in his toddler bed (during the transition he slept shorter for his nap).

Just keep it up trying to put him down for a nap every day - it looks like he is getting back to getting used to his nap.