when did your 2 year old stop napping?

wife2

Mon, Dec 22 2014, 10:48 pm

I have a 2yr and 3month old dd. She is not usually tired until around 2-3 in the afternoon. She is not tired enough before that to take a nap and will not fall asleep before 1:30/2:00. If I keep her up, she is exhausted by 4:00-5:00 and can't stay awake no matter what. She will fall asleep on the floor, the couch, and no matter what I do, she can't make it until the night. I tried to compromise and let her have a nap for about a half hour even if it is after 2 but then she is up till 10:00 at night. If I get her to stay up till 6:00, she sometimes wakes up at 9 or 10 from her nap and won't sleep through the night. If I let her sleep at all, she is up till 10 or 11 pm. How can I get her to be tired at 8:00? What do you do at the in-between napping stage for these next couple of months where she is too tired to stay up with no nap but too awake to nap early in the day?

Please post the time of day they took nap, how long they took nap for, and their bedtime.

wife2

Mon, Dec 22 2014, 11:37 pm

She goes to playgroup in the morning and I used to pick her up at 1:00 so that she could take a nap before it would be too late but then so many days went by with her not falling asleep so now I leave her there until between 2-3, depends on the day

Mon, Dec 22 2014, 11:58 pm

My son stopped napping at 3+, but can you try giving her a down time activity? My son comes home from playgroup and colors (vs an active activity), and even now at 3.5 will occasionally take a nap.

Any schedule change takes a while to stabilize though. So you need to give every change some time before you nix it.

amother

Tue, Dec 23 2014, 12:25 am

my son stopped about a month ago- after he turned 3.

First we were cutting his naps shorter- he would nap from 2-5 no problem (gets in from playgroup at 1:30 or so), but he started waking up really early. so we went down to 1.5 hours tops and would wake him up.

then shortly after he turned 3 he started waking up every morning at 5 or 5:30 and I was not able to manage. It took a couple weeks for the adjustment, but we went from a night sleep of 8pm-5am with a nap from 2:30-4pm to a night sleep from 8pm till 7am. occasionally he will even ask to go to bed at 7:30 or 45.

the first two weeks we had to work to keep him up. I would not let him sleep in his bed, but if he fell asleep on the couch we would let him get about 45 min and then wake him up. he was very tired and we did make bedtime closer to 7 for the first week. initially he still woke at 5/5:30 but after a few days he started waking later. and after 2 weeks he was much more settled with his new no nap schedule. thank hashem cause the 5am waking was killing me!

melalyse

Tue, Dec 23 2014, 8:48 pm

My youngest stopped napping @ 2. He was my earliest to stop napping. At that point he was usually sleeping by 6:00. It was a problem because whenever he was in the car or in a stroller late afternoon he would fall asleep - even if it were for 15-20 min he would be up until 9:30. I felt like we were trading in a 20 min for 3.5 hours.