Dropping afternoon nap on the horizon for my 29-month old?

[thaihotmama]

Mama sense and reading some earlier posts suggests it's time. My 29 month old bedshares and always has... He refuses sleep without a parent in bed for the wind-down time and, for the majority of the time, the sleeping part as well. Especially at nap time, if I get up, he is up within 5 minutes, even if in "deep sleep" when I sneak out.

Sleep has been the bane of our existence since he blessed us with his presence. For the past week or two, it has consistently taken anywhere from 1-2 hours to get him to sleep for both nap and bed time. Truly frustrating for all. He's generally not too fussy about it - just not interested in sleep. Tossing, turning, goofing off. So his actual SLEEP hours are something like 4pm-6 pm and then 11pm-7 am for a total of 10 hours-ish. What do we do? Drop the nap cold turkey then GRADUALLY move bed time earlier - or go ahead and shift it 2 hours earlier? I dread a grumpy evening child - especially since that is the only time my husband will have with him... but it seems necessary at this point, right? TIA!

[Asiago]

My son is 24 months and we went through a similar issue a couple of weeks ago. I think he was just very excited about his new verbal skills. He'd rather stay up ' pretend reading' with a book,  between my husband and I at night in our bed........in the dark.........until midnight. Occasionally bumping the book into my husband's face, as he turned pages.

.

Then he'd sleep late, nap 3-4 hours late into the day,  and be up again until midnight.

He seems to have reset his internal clock now thankfully. I asked my husband to raise the shades in our room when he woke up, so our son would be gently woke by the sunlight, I also concentrated on getting extra long hours outdoors, extra fresh air and sunshine, more than we normally do. It worked. He grew tired earlier, napped earlier and goes to bed when we do, about 9:30.

All in all it just seemed to be a passing phase.

[Peony]

Both DD2 and DS1 started doing that right after they turned 2. It was the end of naps. I just put them to bed earlier at night by a couple hours because they were so exhausted. As time went on, they were able to stay up a little later. 

[crunchy_mommy]

Hmm well daylight savings time is this weekend (if that affects you) so he might be totally thrown off already -- so it could be a good time to go cold-turkey. Or you could find he falls back into a better sleep pattern on his own with the time change.

DS stopped consistently napping around age 2. Now he's over 2.5 and sometimes goes days or even weeks without napping, but other times seems to need them almost daily. We just try to go with the flow & not plan on him napping but still give him opportunities to if he's so inclined. So that means we try to take a stroller/wagon walk (or drive if we're out & about running errands) in the late afternoon and sometimes he'll fall asleep then if he needs it. On the days he skips his nap, sometimes I can get him to sleep a couple hours earlier at night. I would love for him to be more consistent but no matter what I try, I just end up frustrated & he ends up over-tired, so being flexible is what he needs now I guess!

Your DS sounds like he could be a bit over-tired actually, 10 hours isn't much. What about if you aimed for an earlier nap & earlier bedtime? So maybe nap from 1-3pm and bed from 9pm-7am. That would give him an extra 2 hours of sleep. But it sounds like he's a lot like my DS and won't sleep without you, so that would take some commitment on your part (maybe you could spend a few hours in bed reading, or on a laptop? or have DH take on the job of laying next to him while he sleeps?)

Another thought is that you could shorten his nap, only let him sleep an hour so he's still tired enough to go to bed at a reasonable time but not so tired that your evenings are miserable...

[thaihotmama]

Thanks so much for all the words of wisdom. We have now gone 3 days/nights with no naps and things are going better so far. First night, I was out and husband put DS to bed tooooo late, contrary to my request - so he only got 10 hours of sleep and was difficult the next day, especially in the evening. BUT he went to sleep like a charm that second night and slept 11.5 hours, soundly. Then he had a wonderfully happy day until getting tricky an hour or so before bed time last night. He was slightly harder to get down last night (took 20-30 minutes), but then slept well for over 11 hours. So for now - no more struggling to even get to bed for a nap, and I am saving 2 hours or more in the sleep struggle, while already in bed. AND he seems happier. I will say the evenings are tricky... Hope his body gets used to the change and that gets easier, too --- or we try for an earlier bed time... which would REALLY limit time DH gets with him during the week. =/

[curious&eager]

My DS some days takes a nap and some days doesn't.  He's tired in the evenings without a nap, but not super grumpy.  He'll sleep 12 hours at night without a nap or 10 hours with a 2 hour nap (that does mean staying up till midnight).  So, I choose based on whatever works for that day.  If he gets up late, we do no nap, or if I have something to do in the afternoon.  If I have stuff to do in the evening, he gets a nap and then everyone loves my happy stay up late toddler.  He loves being out with people and is so much fun.