I do love nap time. If only it was for me! I can think of nothing better most days than crawling under my duvet for a little snooze but sadly that’s not to be. A few of you have asked about when to change nap times or cut them out so as usual please do share your experiences below.
I’m lucky. Both of my girls have always been good sleepers with the exception of a brief interlude between the age of 0-4 months when they didn’t quite get the concept! By about six months they had both fallen in to their own routines and were almost text book Gina Ford without me having forced anything on them. I guess they just found their own patterns. Both always had a morning, lunchtime and afternoon nap and still went down at seven for bed. That gradually wound down to just a lunchtime nap.
However, that lunchtime nap was rather substantial. At two years old both girls could happily sleep for a good three hours plus if I let them. I promise I wasn’t giving them sleeping pills! This wasn’t really a problem in the most as they went to bed on time still and for a precious few months I had both girls sleeping at the same time so I could get on with jobs.
Everything changed when Molly hit two and a half. She had started to mess around at bedtime and I knew it was probably down to her lengthy lunchtime sleep so I decided to cut this down. We then made the decision to take her dummy off her and that seemed to end her wanting to go to her bed. She did however have some ‘quiet time’ after lunch and would often be snoozing before I could do anything about it. And then something changed. She went from sleeping for three hours to nothing. Absolutely zilch with not even an attempt to have a sleep. Luckily she would still have a little sit down with a film at lunch so I got a short amount of peace whilst Alice was napping too.
Alice LOVES her sleep. So much so I am slightly concerned she has turned in to a teenager some 12 years early. She will call me to get her in the morning. I will point out here that she is in a big bed and so could get out herself but never does. When I walk in I’ll open the blind and she promptly pulls the cover over her head and say ‘I’m not awake properly yet’ or ‘Five more minutes’. The other morning I said ‘fine’ and left her to it thinking she would get up. She stayed lying in bed for 40 minutes just chilling out!!
She too hit about two and a half and started playing up at bedtime. She wasn’t being naughty but would just sit singing and chattering in bed until nearly nine and then would wake up tired the next day, fall asleep at lunch and then the whole cycle started again. I refused to cut out her nap time completely as when I do I have quite possibly the grumpiest child in the world to contend with which is no fun for anyone. So instead I let her have an hour but that still resulted in an afternoon of crying and whinging. I have now discovered an hour and a half seems to be the optimum for her. She gets just about enough of a nap and is still happy to go to bed at seven. If she misses her nap she is normally asleep on the sofa at four which is definitely not a good idea.
Waking a sleeping child is never an easy thing and I hate having to go and get her up when she loves her sleep so much. Some days she refuses to go to bed at lunch or if we are out and about I don’t worry about it now as I know she will be fine. I know I don’t have long left of the naps so I am trying to enjoy it whilst I can.
If they still went to bed on time naps would be absolutely fine but I like to have my evenings child free. I kind of need it. It’s about what works for you. I have friends kids who still nap at age four and others who stopped napping at one.
How have you found nap time and do your littles still have a good lunchtime snooze? Most importantly is it long enough for you to grab a cup of tea and get a load of washing on?!
I’m the same Lottie, I like to have the evening child free and so created an early bedtime routine from quite early on. I’m not worried about anything else but I do like the bath, bedtime routine. This is a timely post. Our 9 month was having about three daytime naps then bed at 7. She has started having a longer lunch time nap and then not an afternoon one. But yesterday she was very sleepy around 5pm and was actually in bed at 6.30pm. Then this morning she was up at 5am. This has happened a few times recently. Not sure if it’s linked to her dropping her mid afternoon bottle and so possibly hungry and also missing her afternoon nap. She is no napping again and has been since 7am. Anyway today I’m going to try an afternoon bottle and a nap and see what happens! We’ve just found out we are having another baby which I’m excited about but I am worried about the lack of sleep. If I can get them napping at the same time (eventually) that would be great!!
Bedtime routines are the best. I still do the same thing every night. Mine did start waking early when they were going to bed earlier as they were tired. It’s such a balancing act of giving them enough sleep in the day and still getting your full night. Maybe a short afternoon nap would do the trick or just a little rest with some milk. Congratulations on the new baby. You will survive, I promise. I’m not sure how I got through the sheer exhaustion but you will. Getting some good kids DVD’s was the main thing with Molly as if she wouldn’t nap she would at least sit and watch that. Good luck xx
Oh I’m so jealous of those lengthy naps!! Ever since my little girl dropped to one nap at about 15 months it is often only 40 minutes, which isn’t enough as she’s still tired and grumpy but she just won’t stay asleep longer than that at home! It’s so frustrating! In the pushchair or the car she’ll do up to 1.5 hours but that’s the absolute max and it means being out and about which isn’t always convenient and I get no jobs done at home! She’s 23 months now and definitely still needs her nap, i just wish it was easier to get her down and get a guaranteed hour or so. I’ve got baby 2 on the way and I’m worried it’ll totally go to pot then! ? X
So funny as Alice is the complete opposite. She will only sleep in her cot and never slept in her buggy or in the car. Children are strange things! My advice with number two is to get lots of good films. Molly became a big Disney fan as even if she wasn’t napping she was quite happy to snuggle down on the sofa with her blanket and some milk and have a good hour or two of chill out time. It was a life saver xxx
That’s a good idea I will make sure I do that, thanks! My little one has only recently started the pushchair napping and it is a godsend sometimes, wish she’d nap as well at home but we can’t have it all I suppose! X
I swear you guys at Rock My Family are mind readers – only last night did I battle to get my little boy to bed until 9pm, gahhhh. I’m not ready to drop the naps yet but maybe I’ll give shorter timings a try and see how we go.
P.S. Lottie you made my day with my little mention from Gran Canaria, I was a bit star struck. We had a lovely time there too, I think the boy is missing Panchi he he x
Hi Kelly *big wave*.
We like to think we have psychic abilities! Oh no, the 9 o’clock battles aren’t much fun are they? Definitely try a shorter nap or short of that run him round the garden before bed time to tire him out!!!
Can we go back on holiday now please? Really in need of it and the girls keep asking when we can go to the disco again!
xxxx
My 17 month old’s naps are really hit and miss – anything from 40 mins to 3 hours after lunch. It means I never know how long I have got free to do housework / enjoy a cup of coffee in peace!
Thankfully no matter how long he sleeps in the day or what time he wakes up he goes to sleep at 7 without any issues. I’ve woken him up from a late nap at 6 before and still had bedtime at the usual time – the boy loves his bedtime! Sometimes he giggles when we put him in his cot because he just wants to be asleep, which is really cute! We did have some issues when we were transitioning from two naps to one nap though as he was often grumpy by 5:30 and overtired by bedtime so I anticipate the same problem when we go from one to none.
He obviously likes to keep you on your toes Tanne! My girls were the same. They would sometimes get up from their afternoon nap at 5 30 and be back in bed at 7. If only we could sleep all day too! xxx
Great minds think alike Lottie. I’ve noticed during the last ten days that Hector has been taking longer to drop off at night and have put this down to the fact that he is having too much sleep in the day. Like Alice and Molly, Hector loves his sleep and would quite happily have 3+ hours in the afternoon. Whilst this has been BRILLIANT I always knew that there would come a day when the naps would have shorten so I’ve made as much of it as it’s possible to do so whether that’s catching up on jobs, gardening or even indulging in a book for a couple of hours (bliss!). I’m now keeping the naps to 2 hours which I know is still a sizeable chunk of time but he’s only 19 months so I think that’s reasonable. Bring on the summer when I can pop out for a bit of a sunbathe…
These kids LOVE their sleep don’t they? 2 hours is still a goo amount. I think little one’s need it to recharge. Although how quick does two hours go?! By the time I have cleared up lunch and grabbed my own plus done a few jobs it seems to have disappeared. Summer is just the best xxx
We went from three to two naps around 6 months, and it worked really well with an hour and half to two hours late morning and then thirty mins cat nap late afternoon to push him until bedtime. Now at 9 months he’s finally started sleeping through the past two weeks but he seems to be moving to one nap. This seems too soon! But then as he is sleeping through the night I suppose I shouldn’t moan, but I do love nap time to clean/cook/drink coffee/garden! Noah also will only nap properly in his cot which is ironic as I spent the first 6 months of his life moaning he would only sleep in his pram. So it’s great he will sleep in his cot but when we go out I end up with one ratty baby!
I have been pretty lucky with sleep for a while now. After 9-10 months of only sleeping on the move or on me for a max of 30 minutes, for the last year we’ve had one nice 2 hour nap in the cot in the middle of the day then bed time 6.30-7pm without any fuss. This has been perfect during pregnancy as I have been getting about an hours sleep myself on my days off from work which I have definitely needed after a morning of toddler chasing! Recently though, our 23 month old has been waking up from his nap sooooo sad and it can take up to an hour of cuddles, CBeebies and snacks for him to get over it. Has anyone else experienced this?
Erk, Martha, my two big girls got v like this just before they dropped their naps altogether. *hides* Transitional phases are just the hardest.
We’ve always done Quiet Time after lunch since they stopped napping though – it’s an actual Thing in our house. The twins go for their nap and the girls snuggle on the sofa and watch Barbie and the Mermaid Hipster Rave* or whatever. So no naps isn’t necessarily the end of the world.
*prob not the actual title but I’m damned if I can keep up with the dross they love.
Sorry Maoibh, did you say your twins AND your girls??!!! Huge respect to you, how do you cope?! (I bet everyone asks you that!)
Haha! I sometimes feel like I would rather have had the twins first as then a singleton would be easy peasy in comparison…
We have a wonder nanny 3 days a week, 7-4, and then with the weekend and hubby at home it’s really just 2 days that I’m ‘alone’ with 50 million* kids. One day part at a time is my motto. Always has been tbf from 1-4 kids!
*4 (am prone to exaggeration ?)
Maoibh we love quiet time here too. Molly is also currently obsessed with the Barbie programmes so this Mermaid hipster rave sounds right up her street! Not sure how much more of Barbie princess charm school I can take! xx
Yes! Dominic has been waking up from a 2-3 hour nap super grumpy for the last week or so. It too can take an hour of distraction or getting out of the house to calm him down. Hopefully just a phase.
Martha, we too have a sad child after naps. Alice is such a droop/grump/crying when she gets up some days if I have woken her up. She just moves from her bed to the sofa and stays there for about an hour. Normally it’s if I’ve woken her up though rather than waking herself which I can kind of understand. I hate being woken up too! x
I’m currently sitting here feeling exceedingly smug that both children are napping. My leg is going dead because the big one is napping ON ME, but still.
Juliet (the big one, 3.6) is not and has never been a good sleeper and would only nap if she was held for the first 18 months of her life. She dropped her nap at about 2 because it was doing bad things for her bedtime routine. She still doesn’t sleep through, mind!
The little one, who is one month old today, is a champion sleeper though. She does 3 hour stints during the day and 4.5hrs at night – long may it last! She even lets me put her down…
Hooray for well behaved second children! And hooray for you mastering the double napping. I’m impressed/jealous in equal measures. Enjoy the peace and quiet! xxx
She has a viral thing, I never usually get that much peace and quiet otherwise!
Timely – I need HELP. My little boy has just turned three and naps are very hit and miss now. I work three days and he’s with grandparents so I’m never sure what goes on then (!), but it seems to me, whether he has 20 minutes in the car or up to 2 hours in the sofa, bedtime is a NIGHTMARE now. He used to go at 7 and fall asleep on his own but for the last year nearly we have the same bath and story bed routine, but he fusses around until gone 9pm, and is always up by 6am. He does still get quite grumpy and tired in the day still and doesn’t seem to be getting enough sleep. What’s worse is we’ve fallen into an awful habit for months on end of both sitting with him in his room until he falls asleep (sometimes over an hour of both sitting on the floor in the dark when we both work and need evenings isn’t ideal!!) Struggling to cut naps out comepletly as he seems to struggle without one and falls asleep in the car etc. Any advice greatly appreciated!! (I won’t even go into the fact that he always comes into our bed during the night too, one step at a time!)
Ah ha, we do the ‘waiting in the dark for them to sleep’ game too. And our 3yo comes in nightly as well.
My mum always used to say that 20 minutes in the car was worth 2 hours at bedtime and unfortunately it seems to be true. Juliet started to drop her nap at 2.6 but there is an adjustment period – there will be a few weeks where he’s miserable and grumpy for a couple of hours in the afternoon while he gets used to not napping. You just have to bite the bullet and get through it, and maybe try and avoid the car at the time he’d sleep usually? Maybe see if you can adjust the evening to do bath, dinner, bed an hour or so earlier?
Oh Sarah, I feel your pain. It is not fun battling at bed time and then battling against the naps. We were the same and it didn’t matter if it was 20 minutes or 2 hours with Molly, she’d still mess about. I had to try really hard to keep her awake and it was hard. Especially the days I was collecting her from my mums as she would always fall asleep in the car. I also had to accept she is an early riser. Most mornings it is around 6 although sometimes we are lucky and she will go to 7. Alice seems much better, nearly 3, and still can have a nap and go to bed although the last few days the naps seem to have dropped off but she is currently say being a grump as she is so tired. It’s a constant battle. Try having some ‘quiet time’ at lunch instead with a good film and hope he doesn’t fall asleep. In terms of the bedtime thing Molly was the same for a while and I had to sit with her until she was asleep. We got her a new night light that projected stars and things on her ceiling and she seemed happy to sit and look at that rather than us staying in with her. Good luck xxx
One nap here at 19 months. I follow the same routine as nursery on our days here so she naps 12-2pm every day. It’s not like I’m dead set on 12 noon but she has the same internal body clock as me and will drop off anywhere. She sleeps for longer in the cot whereas prams and car seats we get 45 minutes (which I guess is one sleep cycle). She will sometimes do three hours in the cot but when I check on her she’s often just awake looking at stuff on the walls or she’s dragged some books in through the bars from her sling bookcase.
Bedtime is 8pm and she wakes up about 6am.
The transition from two to one nap was hard. We just pushed back the morning nap by 15 minutes a day for a few days until we hit upon the same timings as nursery. Would recommend this strategy!
Thanks Lottie and Sara for your replies- good to hear it’s not just me sat on the floor each night for hours on end!! I might try and just bite the bullet all round over the summer when we’ve both got more time off work and try and change the routine and stop naps whenever possible and get a bit stricter. Good idea on a new night light. Although the sun clock thing was quickly relegated after a year of getting up at 5am Sigh! I really struggle with life on bad sleep so I do obsess over it a bit!
Ahhhh naps!! We are all over the place – my 9 month old used to take 2 hours in the morning and an hour in the afternoon from the age of 4-8 months… But all of these naps were in the pram or car! At 8 months I bit the bullet and persevered with cot naps for the morning 2 hour stint and eventually we nailed it. She would go down (albeit with lots of shusshing and rocking) about 2 hours after waking and it was amazing! I got so much done!! Afternoon naps we would keep to car journeys or out for a walk in the pram. However that only lasted just over 3 weeks and we are now in napping hell!!! I am told that at 9 months she still *needs* her naps but she seems to have dropped them both to a max of 30 mins each. She still shows signs of tiredness, very grumpy and goes from happy to meltdown in seconds but getting her to actually go down in the cot has been so horrendous I have actually given up. It seemed an hour and a half of trying to get her to sleep for only 30 mins was just not productive. I tried shifting her awake times, adding in another bottle… To no avail. I’m thinking it is mostly down to teething but as she’s attempting to walk (!!) she surely must be exhausted?? My health visitor said she is too young to drop to only 1 hour total napping a day ESPECIALLY as she still doesn’t sleep through the night.
Sorry bit of a rant. I’m at a loss!
Hi Maddy, if it helps my little boy (now 3) would only ever nap for weird 27 minute stints at that age and wake up very grumpy. So frustrating. In the end, I tried laying his pram flat in the house and putting him in there as soon as he seemed tired and rocking until he fell asleep. It worked – he’d have a longer sleep and also got him back in the routine of napping in the house. What also worked was getting grandparents or someone different to try putting him up in the cot for a nap during the day – he seemed to accept it without fuss from them and again it got him back into a routine. *Might* be worth a try but they are all so different I know!! x