[sunnygir1]

Today is the second day in a row my 20 month old son has skipped his nap. He acts tired, but doesn't fall asleep. After an hour or hour and a half, I give up and let him get up. He has done okay, actually, I guess I'll just have to be very careful with late afternoon nursing and car rides to avoid the dinner-time nap!

Maybe it will resolve -- for how long should I keep trying at nap time? Dd kept up daily naps until 3 or 3.5. Experience?

 

[faithrainbow]

I've worked with kids ages 1-5 for the past six years, and my experience is that napping goes in "waves", and just because a child won't fall asleep for a few days or even weeks doesn't mean they're ready to stop napping. Kids need down-time in the afternoon to process the busy morning and power-up for the rest of the day, and I've had kids who didn't sleep during naptime for three or four months who suddenly started falling asleep again and napped consistently for six months or more. So my suggestion is to view naptime as naptime, and know that it's still valuable even if he doesn't fall asleep, and chances are that he will start falling asleep again soon.

 

[sunnygir1]

Thank you for your response.

I think you are right, but I'm not sure how I will put it into practice. Ds currently sleeps in a crib. Sometimes he will just lie down and go to sleep, other times he will lie down or play quietly in the crib, and other times he will scream and cry for as long as I leave him in there. I guess I don't feel like him crying for an hour is helping either one of us recharge for the afternoon, ya know?

I haven't really had any success with winding down routines with him. If I sit on the couch with him or lie down in bed with him, he just gets totally wound up climbing all over me and being crazy. Idk, maybe I'm just a nap/rest time failure, but I haven't had a lot of luck making anything work for my toddlers. At 4, dd would happily hang out on the couch and read books with/near me, but with ds in the mix, that makes a rest time very challenging.

Blech.

 

[faithrainbow]

Poor mama! You sound tired, too! I totally agree that him screaming for an hour isn't restful for either of you.

I don't know what other people do, but our "winding down" routine starts when they come inside from outdoor play around 12:40. We tiptoe into the house, and older kids go potty while littler kids get new diapers. I close all the curtains in the house and turn out the lights, and I start moving really slowly and stop making eye contact (that's important). We only whisper from that time forward. When the kids are done going potty they have a small snack, then they sit on the couch and look at a book of their choice (quietly, to themselves). Then we tiptoe downstairs and quietly brush our teeth together in the bathroom with the light off, and then I have a soft, slow song that I sing while we go into the nap room (where I have really dark curtains, so it's quite dark), and I tuck the kids in and give them kisses. They are usually asleep by 1:05. I usually stay in the room until they're asleep, sitting in a rocking chair and humming, but if your kids aren't used to that, it may be distracting. I used to have a nap space set up for myself, and would just lie down and take a nap with the kids. Don't know why I stopped doing that, actually!

 

[AKA_PI]

My son is 2 and he is still on a napping schedule. He naps at daycare from Noon until 2 (according to his teacher, he's normally knocked out by 12:30). I try to keep him on the same schedule on the weekends. Sometimes he gets to riled up that he doesn't to go to sleep until almost 3pm , which means he's up at 5 and far from sleepy at his 8:30 bedtime.

I agree with the above poster that naps come in waves but kids definitely need that downtime, even if it's just to sit quietly and slow down.