Is Your Toddler Ready to Stop Taking Naps?
Is Your Toddler Ready to Stop Taking Naps?
Is it the day every parent lives in fear of...the day their toddler stops taking naps completely? When your baby is taking three hour-long naps a day, well that's pretty good. You get some good break times to eat, shower, or get stuff done around the house. When they're about 9 months old and only taking those 9:00am and 1:00pm naps...that's still not too bad, you can get some me-time in.
THENNNN they're in the toddler stage and you're getting one good afternoon nap. It's your saving grace and you do whatever it takes to arrange your day around it.
Then all of a sudden your toddler is fighting that nap like crazy. They're whining, throwing fits, or they lay in their bed awake and just toss and turn during the naptime. Some days they don't nap at all and fall asleep later in a random place.
HOW do you know if your child is too old to nap?
your child is at least 3 years old
Seriously, don't fall into the trap of thinking just because your 1 year old or 2 year old is struggling to take naps, that they are too old to nap. 3 is the absolute earliest that I would say, okay let's just drop the nap completely. If you have a 1 year old or 2 year old who is struggling with naps, you have other issues going on and none of them are your child being too old to nap. Figure out what their real issue is whether it's a schedule issue, routine issue, growth spurt, food sensitivity, wrong bedtime, etc.
your child is consistently dropping naps
If your child will take a nap one day and the next two days they don't, maybe they are ready to quit napping. They could be getting all of their sleep needs met during the night. If your child otherwise seems well-rested, not overly whiny and cranky in the evening, not overly hyper, and sleeps okay at night, maybe they don't need to keep the afternoon nap.
your child won't go to bed until super late
9 or 10 pm rolls around and your kid is either fighting you on bedtime, or tossing and turning in their bed, or crying in their room...they might need to stop napping. A 3 year old requires 11-12 hours of sleep out of every 24 hours. If your child took a 2 hour nap in the afternoon and they normally wake up at 7am...wellll you can't put your child to bed at 7:30-8pm and expect them to lie down and go to sleep!
You can experiment a little with your toddler's nap struggles to figure out the best way to help them.
You can try shortening the nap first of all. For one thing it really needs to be in the middle of the day, not too close to when they woke up in the morning and not too close to bedtime. If they are taking 1-2+ hr naps when they DO nap we would look at trying a 45-60 minute nap and see if that fixes the bedtime issues. You would have to be consistent and also make sure daycare, babysitter, grandma, etc. is not letting them take those super long naps when we're trying to make this work.
If this is not helping we can try no nap and see what we see. We'd move the bedtime earlier if they are a total basket case by the evening. You do want to implement a mandatory quiet time in their room. You are not going to realistically get an hour + but you can start small and work up to 30-45 min for sure. They don't have to sleep but they do have to lie down or play quietly in their room (let's be real this is for mom's sake more than anything). You can use an ok to wake clock for quiet time and I can help you devise some specific strategies for your specific child.
While it is definitely a bummer when your child no longer takes an afternoon nap, you can still get a reprieve – and get them the amount of sleep they need for their health and development – by implementing afternoon quiet time and an earlier bedtime.