Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Giving Up Nap Early

I know that several of you have children who have given up their naps early because I've done a search. But I'm wondering how your child acted during the transition.

DS 4.5 gave up his nap at 2.5 and I thought that was early. Now,though, I'm wondering about DD18mo. She usually does sleep during the day, and will sleep 2 hours sometimes, but then she doesn't go to sleep until 9:30-10 at nighht. She'll sleep late in the morning if I let her. I usually wake her at 9am. I'm kind of thinking about just letting her sleep in super late in the morning, then skipping the nap, to get a regular bedtime of 8:30ish. Overall sleep would be in the recommended range, just not split up like most normal kids.

My initial thought was to first attempt to shorten the nap and that went ok yesterday, but now it's well past naptime and she just won't go down, so I'm thinking about making the leap now.

Any thoughts?

Sounds like a good plan; I'd cut the nap time. You could pick a time during the day for like 'downtime' with rich music to suplant nap time. That may pay off dividends as a good long range thing. Personally, I ignore things like recommended sleep as I have never slept much. DS7.5 stopped napping well before 2 years and needs around 9 to 9.5 hours now.

Do you want her to keep a nap? It sounds like she is sleeping around 12 hours at night, which is typical for that age, isn't it? Have you tried waking her up earlier, say around 8 AM, and then doing the nap around noon? I had to move my twins' afternoon naps earlier as they got older so that they didn't stay up too late, but couldn't just drop it as they became really cranky without a nap. They dropped their naps at almost 2 1/2, and for a while after that would fall asleep every time they were in a car.

My dd dropped her nap before age two also. Luckily, she never fell apart if she missed a nap (or I would have insisted she have one). It started at about 18 months and she'd miss a nap about every 4th day, then every other day. By age 2, she just didt nap. Bedtime was 7 or 7:15, and she'd sleep until 6:00-6:30 (still her wake time at age 7).

I think you can follow her lead if you don't think she's tired. My dd is really easy-going, so I knew that if she got fussy, she was tired and we put her to bed early.

I was going to say both my kids gave up naps well before 18 months, but it was more like *I* gave up trying to force them to nap by then! They are definitely not daytime sleepers Usually I'd have to drive them around in the car, and even as babies they'd only have one or two 20-minute naps.
My rule of thumb is: if you're wondering if you should do something - do it! If your brain is trying to tell you something, it's usually for good reason.
If it were me, I'd just start waking her at 8am and putting her to bed at 8pm or whatever. It might take a few days of crankiness (so have some cool new toys ready) but it'd be worth it in the end. I couldn't bear kids being still up at 10pm! When would I watch my trashy TV?!

Eh, all the HBO and AMS programming is on after 10 anyway...

...says the parent of a 9:30-10:00pm settling, 2-hour napper.

DS4.11 gave up naps just before he turned 3 (when he took his crib down and gave him a bed). DS3.4 gave up regular naps right after he turned 2. He still naps these days on occasion but there's no regularity. He simply passes out and nothing and nobody can wake him up or keep him awake before he falls asleep. He has serious sleep issues at night. If we get him to sleep like most normal kids around 8pm-9pm, he will only sleep for 2-4 hours and will wake up by 1am the latest and be up all night till the morning when he crashes again for another 4 hours. If he takes a 2-4hr nap around 3-7pm, then he's up till about 2-3am and sleep through the morning till 9am ... so this second set up works better for us. No matter what we try, we can't get him to sleep through the night. He just needs to take those two naps rather than one long sleep

DS4.11 gave up naps just before he turned 3 (when he took his crib down and gave him a bed). DS3.4 gave up regular naps right after he turned 2. He still naps these days on occasion but there's no regularity. He simply passes out and nothing and nobody can wake him up or keep him awake before he falls asleep. He has serious sleep issues at night. If we get him to sleep like most normal kids around 8pm-9pm, he will only sleep for 2-4 hours and will wake up by 1am the latest and be up all night till the morning when he crashes again for another 4 hours. If he takes a 2-4hr nap around 3-7pm, then he's up till about 2-3am and sleep through the morning till 9am ... so this second set up works better for us. No matter what we try, we can't get him to sleep through the night. He just needs to take those two naps rather than one long sleep

I *think* that our lives might be easier if she dropped the nap, but change (especially when it relates to kids) makes me nervous.

I know, though, that *I* need some time to myself. I used to be able to get that by waking up early, but for about 2 months, DS4.5 is waking up soon after I get up (6:30-7ish). So if DD doesn't go to sleep until 10, I'm going pretty much non-stop from 6:30am-10:30pm (considering I probably have to do dishes, or something like that after she's finally asleep).

We're homeschooling this year and I'm a freelance writer, so aside from just time to relax on my own, I also need to squeeze in time to do a bit of work...

She often gets cranky around 5 if she hasn't had a proper nap, but today, she was actually pretty good. She eventually asked to go down at 7:30. Knock on wood, after a few fussy wake-ups, she's been fine since 8:30 or so. I'm hoping she's not going to wake up for a midnight play time, but I guess we'll just see what happens.

I'd love it if she could just sleep when she's tired sometimes, but not have that seriously affect her nighttime sleep.

Mk13....You have it much worse than I.

And you've only heard one part of it Aside from the non-sleeping little guy, the older one has had sleep issues since he was born. Won't sleep at all at night without a heavy dose of Melatonin, sometimes with extra hydroxyzine added to help with allergies and the insomnia. And even with the meds, he'll fall asleep but wakes up numerous times every night and is really hard to get back to sleep. Which is why the only way ALL of us can get some decent sleep is when we have the little one party the first part of the night (when DS4.11 is sleeping under the meds) and then the younger one finally goes to sleep too and doesn't wake up the older one with all the noise like he does when his two-naps-a-day schedule flips.

But it's not all that bad. I NEED to be able to sleep in the morning. I can do just fine without evening sleep. Plus the little guy has a gate in his door so I give up around 1am and go to bed and he's happy in his room reading books on my Kindle or playing learning games on Leappad. Sleep meds and supplements don't work on him so we're stuck with this set up for now and every time I have a friend or five give me their opinion how they would NEVER let their kids play at night, blah blah blah ... I just think to myself YOU TRY ... you wouldn't last a WEEK