(UPDATE) Justed moved DS out of crib to Big boy bed and having trouble getting him to nap

[Oregonmother]

He is doing fine at night. He doesn't cry or try to get up or anything, but for naps he just plays/reads books (in his bed at least) the whole time. He just turned 2 last month and is able to get in and out of his crib by himself so we decided to move him to his toddler bed as I am due with #2 at the end of January. I put darkening shades in his room yesterday and now he at least doesn't try to get out of bed, but he never falls asleep. I left him in his room for 1 1/2 hours. Monday was his 1st nap in the big bed, so maybe he just needs to get used to it. He sleeps bout 11-12 hours at night, I really hope we are not done with daytime naps!! Any advice?

Update** Well DS did take a nap today (Thursday) yeah!!! So hopefully he is getting used to the big boy bed. Lori I did consider the crib tent before we switched him over, but we will need the crib for the baby on the way so I decided to just bite the bullet and move him. I would rather deal with it now than when I have an infant to take care of too. Thanks for the suggestion though.

[mharling]

We went through that too. I hope this doesn't seem like a trite response, but give it time. Lane's naps suffered for a few weeks (sorry!) before he got back on track. I was worried that naps were over too, but now he's back to at least a 2-hour nap nearly every day. Phew!

Mary - Some days work. Some days don't.
Lane - April 2003
Faye - March 2005

[amp]

I so don't want to hear this, as Jake's new bed will be here Friday at 5pm!

I'm glad Mary is saying that it happened to her and that it passed in a couple weeks. I hope to heck that's the case!

[Oregonmother]

Thanks Mary, that was what I was hoping to hear.

[Momof3Labs]

It seems that a lot of recent 2 year olds go through nap avoidance - I found that out when we went through it, too! It was another 11 months, though, before DS gave up naps for good.

Can you go back to the crib for a while until his naps stabilize again (may be 1-2 months) and then reintroduce the big boy bed? A crib tent does a fantastic job of keeping them from climbing out.

Either that, or hang in there - he should eventually make the transition, you may just have to work through two things (new bed + 2 yr nap avoidance) at once!

[jfmiller]

Not to hijack this thread, but my husband is talking about when our 19 month old DD will move to a big girl bed (I have a 4 year old DS who moved before he was two - that was a disaster, but I needed the crib for DD so worked through it.) With my DD, I am intrigued by the idea of the crib tent - so my question is to Lori...

Did your DS have a hard time adjusting to the crib tent? Did it bother him to have something over him, etc. That is my only concern (a small one) because I REALLY want to keep DD in her crib as long as possible. She loves it and I love her in it!

Thanks for any insight!

Jennifer
Proud SAHM to Graham (1/02) and Genevieve (4/04)

[g-mama]

We had a similar experience when we moved Paolo to a bed at 2.5. It took about 2 weeks of missed naps where he would just play around, pull all the books off the shelf, etc. and then he went back to napping. Those were an awful two weeks! I guess the newness of the freedom wore off and he just stopped. He went on to continue his daily 2-3 hour nap til almost age 4.


Kristen
Paolo 11-00
Benjamin 8-03
and a *THIRD BOY* coming in December '05

[Momof3Labs]

I was concerned about how he would take the crib tent, but he LOVED it from day one!! We made it into this super-special thing, and had no battles over it. Even now, he is adament about being zipped in every night. Ah, little does he know how easy it has made my life - no more climbing out, no more throwing everything overboard and screaming for it to be rescued!

[Jen841]

Jude transitioned to the bed right after turning 2 (it was put in his room as an option at 2.) Due to daycare, he only napped her on the weekends at the time. We had 1 weekend of "play time" vs nap, but the next weekend was fine. Now with my leave he naps like a champ in it! He does require the whole bedtime ritual, all the way to Goodnight Moon and prayers. Maybe you need your full bedtime routine for naps too? We never had to do that before, but we do now. He asks for it.

I feel like a mean Mom, but we do make it so he can not leave the room. There is a knob cover to keep him in intially, than we open the door and put up a gate once he is asleep so we hear him. The monitor we move to Evan's room.

If only we could break the 6am wake up routine!