Hi,
a question for you parents of toddlers....my 26 month old twins are in a pattern of taking up to 1 1/2 hours to fall asleep during nap time. They are usually in their room (both in cribs), bouncing around, giggling or quietly sitting talking, singing etc. for the most part, no one is ever upset or crying.
They are usually up in the morning between 7 and 7:30, and I usually put them down for nap at 1p or 1:30....they are regularly not falling asleep until 2:30 or 3, or sometimes even past 3. But, they almost always eventually fall asleep and sleep for at least 1 1/2-2 hours. I don't let them sleep past 5. On the days when naps run especially long, bedtime might get pushed back to 8:30 at latest. They usually have no problems at bedtime and sleep thru the night.
my question is...have any of you experienced this? I'm wondering if I should officially move nap time back so we can do more in early afternoon (after lunch), but fear they will get overtired and not take nap or will still take just as long to fall asleep, which would be too late in day. maybe i should not worry about it as it doesn't seem to bother them to be up in their room for so long before falling asleep?
thanks for any sharing you may have!
Lana
Hi Lana,
ReplyDeleteMy twins are 32 months old. At school they sleep fabulously from 12:30 to 2:30 (peer pressure probably). At home though, things are really different. One is a good napper, while the other would be happy to miss it altogether and then be over-tired later. Joe (the good napper) can’t really fall asleep if Sofia is playing quietly in the same room – she is never really quiet enough. So I always separate them. Joe falls asleep immediately by himself, and Sofia eventually falls asleep on the couch in the kitchen – often an hour later. One thing that I have had to do though is move nap time back to about 1:30 when they are at home. And if Sofia never falls asleep, it isn’t the end of the world.
Good luck!
Nina
Lana,
ReplyDeletethe girls did that too. Now at 33 months, some days they don't nap at all! At Day care they have the "opportunity to nap" from 12:30-3 and at home they do from "1:15- 4". If no one is upset, I wouldn't worry about it!
Sarah
Hi Lana,
ReplyDeleteThat sounds exactly where we were around this time last year. They would eventually collapse from exhaustion around 3 and it would mess up our entire evening routine.
Depending on how desperate I was feeling, I would go for a short drive. The both would crash and since they transfer well, it was easy enough for me to carry them to bed and let them sleep it off. Nowadays, they're in toddler beds, so we can't really leave them alone. They're too physical with each other. So we normally plan weekend trips around nap time, so they'll fall asleep on the ride home. It's frustrating to be held hostage like that, because they used to be amazing sleepers. No big surprise, their day care provider says they are the first to fall asleep and that they sleep the longest. They need no back rubs or songs- they just lay down and go to sleep.
We also have the same issues at night- we pretty much need to be in there for them to not get into too much trouble. Fun fun for everyone!
Good luck,
Becky
I have nothing constructive to say other than I hear ya. I'm having the same problem with 24 month olds. They just play and giggle. Mine aren't falling asleep though--maybe I haven't been waiting long enough? When I'm desperate, I bundle them up in snow suits and strap them in the stroller and walk them to sleep or nurse them to sleep (like I did when they were three months). I hope somebody has a suggestion for this! I'm not ready to quit naps!
ReplyDeleteWe are in a similar situation with our 2.5 y/o's. Unless we drive them to sleep and transfer them, we usually have a lot of resistance (even if it's playful) to just going off to sleep. Personally I think it is the beginning of the end of naps, especially if night sleep is getting better.
ReplyDeleteRose
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI was wondering if you should try putting them to nap earlier. my guys are up at 7.30 am and I put them down at 12.30, it means a really early lunch at 11.30 and no sugary foods or juice for an hour before nap time. they generally nap for 2 + hours. just wondering if they are getting over tired. sometimes one of my guys takes a while to go to sleep but I leave him up there for at least 1 1/2 hours to have down time. it is very rare that they don't sleep at all - generally if they are stuffy with a cold.
sometimes at the weekend we go on a bigger outing in the morning - when they go down for their nap late it takes them ages to wind down.
just a thought
love Jo
Lana,
ReplyDeleteI don’t have twins (yet), but I can assure you that this is a very common problem in our household.
Our daughter has actually mostly given up naps altogether during the weekday (though most of the other kids in her class still nap). She’s 29 months and this has been going on for about 5 months now. We find that she is a crabby mess at the end of the day, which suggests that she may still need the nap- but she will not do it. She’ll lie on her rest mat for an hour/hour and half, while all the other kids around her are fast asleep. If she starts singing or laughing too loudly, her teachers remove her from the room. So far it’s been a giant pain in the ass, since we work all day and then come home to a cranky toddler who ends up falling asleep at 7 pm because she’s so exhausted. She sleeps through the night.
As for our weekends, when she is not at daycare, she stopped taking naps for us at around 20 months. She’d whine and cry – we tried everything. Finally we hired a babysitter to come for an hour and half from 12:30 to 2, to give her lunch and put her to bed. (We go out on weekend lunch dates now instead!) She will take a nap for the babysitter. But she doesn’t fall asleep until almost 2 and will sleep until 4 if we don’t wake her. If we let her sleep 2 hours, that means her bedtime is disrupted and she stays up until 9. If we let her sleep 1 hour, she goes to bed at 8. In general, she’s much more pleasant to be around after she’s napped, and we don’t mind the later bed time since it gives us more time with her.
I think this means that she’s just able to go later without sleeping and at a certain point, we will have to give it up altogether. If Vesper started taking her naps as late as 2:30 or 3, then I’d just get rid of it because I want her to be on schedule at night – i.e. I believe Wee Willy Winkie is right. They should be in bed by 8 pm.
I hope that helps.
Good luck with the nap issue.
Simi
Hi Lana,
ReplyDeleteWe had the same problem at 26 months so we just had them nap in different rooms. We had already switched them to twin beds(bunks split) so they were fine with sleeping in big beds. It worked instantly for us, they usually sleep from 12-2:30. They still sleep in the same room at night but they usually just talk for 15-30 min before going to bed.
Best of luck!
Jill
I'm reading through these posts, and, though naps are less of an issue now that my girls are almost four (we can live without them, more or less), I feel validated by the number of people who nurse/stroll/drive their kids to sleep. One of ours goes to sleep easily at nap time - if the other one isn't keeping her up, which, left to their own devices, is never. When they were toddlers, napping was best when we would go out in the morning, have a little lunch, and then drive home. Almost guaranteed sleep and they transferred well.
ReplyDeleteNaps still are a bit of an issue now that they're in preschool. The good napper naps and the no-napper generally doesn't. Our problem now is dealing with the asymmetry this causes with bedtimes (no-napper is crazy tired and the other is energized). Also, when they both nap, they are up past *our* bedtime. Argh! I will be so glad when napping is over and we can just have a consistent bedtime for both of them. That happens, right? (There have been some weeks when they've both dropped their naps and my spouse and I had had evenings - to ourselves! But they aren't quite ready to do this all the time yet.)
Helen
thanks everyone!!! we solved our problem by separating their cribs farther apart.
ReplyDelete