So what do you do when your child is ready to drop down to just one nap a day
but they're having some early rising difficulties too they're waking up too
early and the early rising is blocking the transition to one nap a day. Why
might that happen? so imagine you're your child is developmentally ready there at
that right kind of age and stage developmentally to be dropping down to
one nap is where their body is they're ready for sort of longer wakeful chunks
and one good solid nap in the middle of the day they're not really wanting to do
two anymore you know that developmentally it is time two naps won't fit in you know
that two naps won't fit because if they have one then they're not tired enough
to take another one no matter how you jiggle it around with timings, you know that
you just can't get two naps from them anymore
and perhaps what you're seeing though is that they can't last the morning because
of an early rising problem they can't make it through to the middle of the day
and a sensible place to put that one nap therefore they're either going to get
overtired or you you need to make that nap earlier but then the afternoons too
long so this this early rising thing is causing a problem making that transition
to one nap but you definitely can't do two anymore so if that sounds familiar
then here are four tips for you to work this out and to move through this
problem because early rising is obviously the issue here and that's
that's the thing we want to get rid of so what can you do to start working on
that nap whilst that early rising is happening well first of all push the
nap the one nap as late as you can in the morning without letting your child
get overtired so for instance if they're waking at 5:00 a.m. every day and you
know they just can't make it till midday or 12:30 for a nap maybe 11 is the
absolute latest you can get them to then push for 11 if it's half 10:00 it's half
10:00 but it try and get them, eek them out too as late as you can in the
morning before they go beyond tired and get over
tired you don't to push them too far an overtired child's gonna probably have
a hard time settling or not take us good length nap so you wanna catch them
before they're too tired or overtired but see what the latest window is that
you can stretch them to let's say that it's like 11:00 and then they sleep for
a couple of hours then you your afternoon stretch hopefully won't be too
long but if it is, it's gonna depending on where bedtime usually is
you might need to do some early nights and that's an absolute definite second tip
for you is put them to bed early whilst you're doing this early nights could be
a perfect opportunity to top-up so their early rising because they're overtired
they're overtired because they can't take two naps and day anymore but one
isn't working either and perhaps they're having too long awake in the morning or
too long awake in the afternoon and then by the time they go to bed they're
already overtired and so the overtime is continues, put them to bed early, say you have
a 7:00 p.m. bedtime it's really happy with make it six or six-thirty not
forever just temporarily let them top-up some of that loss sleep so what
this does is allows you to - they've started the day at five, they have gone
for a sleep at eleven then maybe they've done their two or two-and-a-half hours
or something and then the afternoon they're okay they're feeling good but
don't don't push them all the way on to a bedtime bring bedtime earlier bring
that afternoon a bit shorter replenish some of that sleep that alone might
start to get rid of the early rising anyway so it's a good move to make
but it's the move you can make to try and make one nap work in the place that
it's sitting a little on the early side temporarily so the other thing is that
you may need to do a split lunch that's my third tip for you if you feel like
the nap has to happen late morning and it just throws lunch off and then your
child probably wakes up too soon from that sleep because they're hungry when
actually if they weren't hungry they would have slept longer try a split
lunch again this is a temporary measure it's not going to be like this forever
but try and prepare something that you can give your child a late morning
light lunch or snack or something to give them something before they take
that early nap say 11:00 and then something else to eat when they wake up
from that nap so you're literally splitting lunch and putting it a little
bit either side of that sleep because the sleeps sitting right on top of lunch
a temporary measure for you there as well and then my fourth thing for you is
just a real emphasis on avoiding adding more over tiredness to the mix if you're
struggling with this nap transition and it's because your child's early rising
then your child is already overtired because it's most likely to be because
of over tiredness that they are early rising by doing this by replenishing
some sleep wherever you can but probably by going to bed earlier that's gonna
help fix the early rising anyway and allow for a substantial nap and that
substantial nap is also going to help to overcome the over tiredness so you see
how this brings all the pieces of the puzzle together and in no time at all
your table will go back to sleeping until 6:00 or later in the morning and
they are we ready to push that nap back to that nice spot and around midday
12:30 sleep nicely and be quite happy for their normal bedtime