- Hi, I'm Dana, welcome to this week's video.
This is a sad, sad day when this occurs.
When should your toddler stop napping?
And I know I can remember going through it
with all three of my kids,
that day where I had to accept the fact
that my toddler no longer needed
that two or three hour afternoon nap.
So I want to give you a few tips today
to sort of decide if it's time and what you should do
if you're ready.
So I find that it really comes down
to a choice on your part.
Most toddlers will happily take their afternoon nap
and they'll usually sleep for a good two or three hours.
However, the trouble starts at bedtime.
So if you're finding that your toddler
is now stalling around bedtime
or wandering out into the hallway repeatedly
or singing, talking, having a little party in her crib
for an hour or more every night
then it might be time to make a decision.
Now, you have two choices really and that is pull the nap
and what that means is you would just stop offering a nap
to that toddler and have her to bed by seven p.m.
I would say even 6:30 p.m. for a few weeks
until her body gets used to this
and that will stop these hour long,
two hour long play sessions in the evening
and have her sleep a good 12 hours through the night.
Now, if that's a horrifying thought to you,
you really love that afternoon nap
and I completely get where you're coming from
then you can keep the afternoon nap
but you have to monitor your expectations around bedtime.
For some kids, two and a half, three year olds,
it's just not enough time awake
between when that nap ends and bedtime
to build enough fatigue to have them fall asleep
in a timely manner.
So if it's taking her longer than 20 minutes to fall asleep
pretty much every night
then we know that there's just not enough fatigue
and you'll have to adjust bedtime accordingly
and that could be you could just start with 30 minutes later
and see if that cuts down on the time
and if that doesn't work then try an hour later
and see if you can kinda find the sweet spot
to have her falling asleep in a timely manner.
Now, for me, I really loved,
if I had to pick, I really loved my seven o'clock bedtimes.
I enjoyed that evening time.
It was sort of my my time and for me, it just made sense.
I'd rather pull the nap a little on the early side
so that everyone's asleep by seven but some people,
like I said, they would prefer to keep that nap
and just adjust bedtime accordingly.
So if you've decided though to pull the nap,
I wanna give you a couple of tips around that.
It's going to be a tough transition.
There's no way around it.
It's a very, very hard transition for the body clock
to go from taking daytime sleep to having none
so you're gonna have to prepare yourself
for a little afternoon crankiness
or a bit of a meltdown around the dinner hour.
This is just the body adjusting
to a different way of organizing sleep.
What you can do to sort of cushion this a little bit
or make it a bit easier is do some sort of quiet time
right when nap was going to occur.
Now, I love the idea of putting a child in her room,
showing her some options of things she can do in there
and setting a timer for about 30 minutes
and just allowing her some space to play quietly on her own.
Now, this can take a little bit of work
because lots of toddlers don't like to be on their own
independently playing.
They like to be constantly entertained by you.
So this is gonna take a little bit of work on your end
to say this is a rule now, you have to do this.
You can stay in your room and do these things,
here's your options, you've gotta wait till the timer goes
and then mommy will come get you
and we can proceed with our afternoon
and I find that this little breather,
this little break from you
and this sort of focus on sort of quiet independent play
can help get them through the rest of the afternoon
without too much of a meltdown.
If she falls asleep in the car for 20 or 30 minutes
as you're going through this transition,
that's not the end of the world
but I do find it's better to pull the nap
than waffle back and forth
between some days she gets it and other days she doesn't.
Having it gone just helps the body clock
get in line with this faster.
Alright, thanks for watching today.
Sleep well.