Changing schedules

We let our children set their own schedules. However, Cate has gone from an 8:00 bedtime with 2 daily naps to a 10:45 bedtime with 1 nap. She does sleep later, however, this is not working. I am not a happy camper. Did this happen to any of you? How did you fix it?

 

What age are they ? I'd highly recommend Happy sleep habits happy child -- great book and most of us on here have read it. We can offer some quick fixes but if you read the book you will see the rational behind WHY it works. So for you instead of 8:30 pm bedtime -- move it forward to say 6:30 pm or 7:00. Believe it or not, the more they sleep the more they WANT to sleep. At about 6 months I found the usual 8 pm bedtime was too late. I found at about 6 months I didn't have to look for sleep signs like rubbing eyes, crying, red eyes, etc. At that age I could start to look at the clock more. There is a ton, and it REALLY WORKED for me. I hope you find the time to get the book and read it...

Heather

 

I also wonder how old your twins are? Mine had a bedtime of 10pm at 2months old, 8 pm at 3months old, 6pm at 4months old, and at 5months old we started a 530-6 bedtime. I just found they couldn't last much longer then that. I would watch for sleepy/fussy signs and they show up now around 530pm so I don't push them past that time otherwise it is chaos in our house!

 

QUOTE(isis @ Aug 4 2008, 12:23 AM) [snapback]911980[/snapback]
I also wonder how old your twins are? Mine had a bedtime of 10pm at 2months old, 8 pm at 3months old, 6pm at 4months old, and at 5months old we started a 530-6 bedtime. I just found they couldn't last much longer then that. I would watch for sleepy/fussy signs and they show up now around 530pm so I don't push them past that time otherwise it is chaos in our house!


When is their last nap if they ahve a 6 PM bedtime? And when is their last feeding??

 

At 4mnths old they were going to bed at around 6pm. They would take about 4-5 naps/day. All naps were about 45-60min long. And they would only stay awake about 60minutes at a time. So if they were up at 6am then they would go back down for a nap at around 7am, wake at 8am, go back down for a nap around 9am, and repeat all day long! Not sure if this would work for everyone but it definitely worked for my babies, they just couldn't stay awake longer then about an hour without needing a nap and getting cranky.

I nurse them, so I would always nurse when they first woke up from naps, so I ended up nursing them about once every 2hrs, which worked out fine because they hit a growth spurt at around 4months where they wanted to eat more often.

 

They are 11 months today. They had a really good set schedule of going to bed from between 8 and 8:30 to this. Caleb did it for 2 nights, but he has gone back to his regular bed time. Also, what is this new aversion to the high chairs the last 3 days? Is it just because they are growing up? we have fits at every meal time because they want to be held.

 

We had some nap issues right around the same time. I'm not sure why, maybe a growth spurt, but they worked out of it soon. I hope you have the same experience.

As for the high chair, we had that as well. They are getting more indepenent, or wanting to be. We started giving them spoons or bowls so that they could "help" feed themselves, and that helped with our high chair aversions.