Where did the nap go?

[ormc]

I'm afraid my husband and I made a terrible mistake by putting our 2.5 year old into his toddler bed. He never tried to climb out of his crib and had no problems laying in there singing or talking as he was falling asleep and upon waking up, waiting for me to get him up.

He's been pretty much resistant to potty training, and we thought giving him this one "big boy" thing would help that out a bit.

Boy, were we wrong! Now, he's not napping. I've put a gate outside his door to keep him in his room during "naptime" but he spends most of the time at the gate singing and calling for me.

Because the nap is gone, I'm putting him to bed earlier (now around 7pm) and he sleeps until about 7am. So he's getting a total of about 12 hours of sleep. However I feel this isn't enough because he's awful to deal with from about 4pm on. And I feel like its all our fault because we disrupted his sleep location/routine.

I tried to put the crib side back on, but he climbed out. Am considering putting some toys in his room and telling him that he can play quietly by himself for an hour each afternoon, or nap if he would rather (yeah, right). But am afraid putting the toys in there will distract him during his nighttime sleep! What should I do??

[ormc]

Man, gettin' no love here...

And just found out my husband was re-directed to relief efforts in Haiti, so a few more weeks trying to figure this one out on my own...

[plusbellelavie]

sorry to hear you will be dealing with this yourself as your DH is going to Haiti but he will be helping so many people there so bless him!

My youngest is only 13mths so I am not dealing with this nap situation with him yet but I wanted to share what worked for me with my two older DC when they didn't want to nap at around the same age but were difficult to deal with without one.

First I would call it quiet time not nap time. Second we made a drawing of the "rules" of quiet time and hung it in their rooms. Some examples of the rules there were different ones for each child since they are 2 yrs apart and had different diffculities with nap time.

Examples of the rules they were not allowed to call for me they had to stay in their room on their bed they were allowed to have a book or sticker books (very popular with my DD) and a toy or two which they picked before quiet time but it had to be a "quiet" toy. The big rule was that they and their toys had to be quiet as if they were in a library! I also put on a CD at that age I think it was like Dr Seuss or little audiobooks like that...they both loved listening to those. The other big rule was that I would come and get them when quiet time was over they were not to leave the room or call for me until I came for them.

The first few days it was a novelty and they didn't sleep but afterwards when it became part of the rountine they would either play quietly by themselves and often they would end up taking a nap. Quiet time usually lasted 1 hrs but if they had fallen asleep I tried to let them sleep at least an hour.

I think the consequence I used for not following the rules were that we wouldn't go outside to play after the nap or that they would have one less book that night or if there was a special snack that day that they would not have it. My daughter l think lost a special snack once and then followed the "rules" and my son lost his extra story once or twice.

Since I worked from home I had the flexiblity to put one of them to bed earlier if they hadn't had a nap and were being cranky....and since they couldn't tell time they wouldn't know if was early so I didn't tell them...works well in winter!

I hope this helps! I will be thinking of you and prayers to your DH during his time Haiti!:hug:

[ormc]

Oh, those are great ideas! Thank you so much! I love the idea of a poster of the rules. Keeping him quiet has been rough, especially since I have a 10 month old napping right next door to him. I will try this!

And thanks for the prayers for my husband. We are so proud of him. I hope I didn't seem too self-centered by complaining that he wasn't around. I feel bad complaining about my simple problem when thousands of people don't even have food and water.

[hillview]

We are in EXACT situation. Moved DS to Big Boy Bed. He is impossible to get to nap. He goes to bed at 7:45 or so and then gets up at 7 or so. He is a puddle by 5 or so. I am not sure if he is outgrowing his nap or if it is the big boy bed or ...
/hillary

[ormc]

Hillary, are things getting better?

It seems like over the course of the week, DS will actually take a nap 3 or 4 days. What I've found works is to put him up in his room with enough time to fuss/play around before he'll nap. Usually about 45 minutes before I'd like him to actually be asleep.

Also, because he can open his door and call to me, etc, I think he was just trying to see how much interaction I'd give him. So unless he's pooped or some other reason I REALLY need to go to him, I just ignore him and he eventually lays down and sleeps. I also don't keep a lot of toys in his room - just books, the dog he sleeps with, and I let him bring one train up when we go up for the nap.

I'm still not over the shock of my once perfect sleeper disappearing. But I'll take the naps when I'm lucky enough to get them! I am noticing a trend though - when he does nap, he takes much longer to fall asleep at night. So I've still got some figuring out to do!

[pastrygirl]

At around 2.5 is when my son stopped taking consistent naps (I had moved him to a bed at 23 months, so it wasn't related). He went through a few phases where he stopped napping for a week or two, but then returned to a daily nap for a week or two. By the time he was 3, his nap was gone for good. I still give him 1.5 hours of quiet time in his room every day -- he needs the downtime. Every once in a while, he takes a nap.

I've heard of putting on an audio book, so we just bought a CD player for his room yesterday. I'm hoping it makes him nap more often, because some days he looks SO tired!