Falling asleep way too late

I posted last week about the girls falling asleep really late, partly because they aren't really that tired at bedtime.... I decided to just leave it be, but Sarah has been taking it to extremes recently.

Yesterday she napped from 2:30-4:45 -- we had to wake her up because we had friends coming over at 5, but she was so unhappy about being woken up that she sat on my lap and whined for half an hour. Then she didn't fall asleep until after 11 and was miserable about being woken up at 7 this morning for daycare.

She's noticeably more wretched in the morning if she fell asleep really late the night before. I'm not quite ready to start skipping naps altogether, as long as she's still willing to fall asleep, but should I start waking her up after an hour or so? If you tried this, did it help?

 

Alden, we have a pretty weird (read: non-traditional 3-year old) schedule...but it's somehow working for us.

I work 3 days a week, so I wake the boys at 7am on those days. Other days they wake up around 7:30.
We nap from 2-5pm (they don't fall asleep right away).
We go to bed around 8:30 when they have to get woken up and more like 9:00 when it's a stay-at-home day.

N will sometimes be awake until 10pm (a couple of nights 10:30). On the nights they stay up later they are MUCH faster to settle down and go to sleep instead of spending the first 40 minutes playing catch with their stuffed animals and using their cribs as trampolines.

N could make it through the day without a nap and go back to a 7:30 bedtime, but J is READY for a nap at 2. It's a lot like the transition to one nap, where there simply wasn't enough time in the day to squeeze in two naps, but not enough stamina to survive with only one. So, in the interim, we'll just do what works for us instead of minding what the scheduling experts say.

We're also really enjoying the extra time with the kids in the evenings since I'm working 3 days a week I like that they are wasting a good chunk of the afternoon sleeping if it buys me an extra hour or so with them at night. On my days off it's WONDERFUL to have that time to get stuff done, recharge my battery, and meal prep. I'm in no rush to give it up and neither are they.

ETA: Duh, the whole point of your question: Initially I tried messing with their nap length (they've been marathon nappers since going to one nap) and I found that forcing them to wake up before they were ready not only made for grumpy kids all evening, but the sleep wasn't replaced at night, so I just ended up with an even more tired kid.

 

This is exactly what was happening to us. The girls started to not be ready to go to sleep until 2 or 2:30 and then they would sleep until 4 or 4:30 and then not fall asleep until 10-10:30pm It was just too much so we did away with naps all together and now they go to bed between 6:30-7. At first I tried only letting them nap for an hour and then waking them but then I had cranky kids (more so lorien than arwen) and then I found that the one hour nap was enough to sustain and completely refresh them so it just wasn't working because they still couldn't fall asleep until rather late. It's been much better since ridding of naps although on some days they can be unbrearable the last hour or so and once in a while they will pass out in the car if we are coming back from somewhere but I just go with the flow on those days.

 

I did the waking after an hour thing with all my girls and it did help a bit-they fell asleep earlier than they would if they were allowed to sleep until they naturally woke up (2 hours), but I think it was still later than their 'normal' bed time. For this reason we only did it for a few months before going to no nap.
In terms of the grumpy-ness they would be grumpy for 10-20 mins after waking up and then be fine for the rest of the day. When we dropped naps altogether for the first month or so they'd often get grumpy around 4-5pm.

 

QUOTE(SweetpeaG @ Feb 23 2009, 05:27 PM) [snapback]1201592[/snapback]
Initially I tried messing with their nap length (they've been marathon nappers since going to one nap) and I found that forcing them to wake up before they were ready not only made for grumpy kids all evening, but the sleep wasn't replaced at night, so I just ended up with an even more tired kid.

Yeah, this is what worries me.

I could deal with the falling asleep late (though I was stressing about it) as long as she seemed well-rested overall. But the morning hysterics are wearing me out. But it sounds like cutting naps short isn't going to help that much.

We've skipped a nap now and then (probably a total of 5 times), but I'm sure it's still a big leap to doing it every day. Plus I am really loathe to give up naps because I love my weekend naptime! I wouldn't mind if they gave up naps at daycare.

Of course, the daycare teachers feel exactly the opposite -- they don't care if the kids are awake till 11 at night, but they don't like having cranky kids at 5! (Not that I blame them.)

Oh well -- I guess it's just one of those awkward phases (like the 2-to-1 nap transition, as Sweetpea said) where there just isn't an easy answer.

 

I don't know, maybe it is because we are younger, but Jack and Lily nap from 2-4:30 and still go to bed at 7:30 and wake between 7& and 7:30. Sometimes I have to wake Jack at 4:45. I imagine we will eventually have the same problem you are having. Can you put them down a little earlier? I wish I had an answer for you. Keep us posted and let us know what works !

 

We took the paci away from my DD in January. She did okay sleeping at first, but over the last couple weeks she's been a nightmare at bedtime and won't go to sleep for hours. And her sister was starting to feed into/participate in it too. So Saturday I took them out shopping and we were out and about pretty late to start a nap, so we just skipped nap. They went down like a dream with not one peep.

Yesterday they had a nap and last night was bad again.

Today we told our nanny to skip nap and just let them have some quiet couch time. They went down tonight without one peep.

While I really, really will miss naptime, I think it is likely time to give it up. We're going to test it out the rest of the week to see if it works everyday, and if so, I guess we're done with naps. We're almost ready to move to twin beds, so I think naps would have gone with that anyways.

 

I never let the boys' much past 2:30 to protect their 7:30 bedtime. I put them down right after lunch - that's usually about 12:30, sometimes a bit sooner.

 

I have one 50/50napper and one non-napper....my non napper sometimes WOULD sleep from 3-5 if we let her, but then would stay awake until 10PM!! They have 'quiet time' each day- nap or not.

I wake mine at 2:30 to preserve the 7:00/7:30 bedtime.

I found that they sleep a bit later in the am now and even my napper go to bed on time---but if my other DD naps, YIKES! they are up chatting it up.

No nap== bedtime and asleep very quickly

FWIW-- they nap/rest in seperate rooms and have been in toddler beds for about 5 months (at the time they BOTH napped).

 

That's what was happening when we were towards the end of naps. When they did nap, they stayed up too late. It wasn't too bad because I'm a SAHM and we don't really have to be up and out, so sometimes they would sleep till 9:00-9:30 in the morning. But, the staying up so late wasn't working for us, just the way our house is set up, the bedrooms are just down the hall from our main living area. Plus, now with Caleb, I'm up at 6:30-7:00 anyway. So, to get us back on track, I just stopped trying to get them to nap. They would only nap maybe once a week anyway. I know you don't want to give up the nap on weekends, but it really does free things up. I do still try to get them some down time, and that seems to eliminate some of the late afternoon crankiness. I personally wouldn't wake her up, if she's anything like Ainsley, she wakes up a giant grouch and it is so not worth it! I hear you on the morning crankiness too, if they don't get a good night's sleep, the next morning is hell. Ainsley does tend to fall asleep in the car if we go out in the afternoon, and it is so horrible when we get home and have to get her in the house! She refuses to come in, will sit in the driveway and have a tantrum, ugh!

 

Naps never interfered with bedtime until they were about 3.5 years old and then we noticed a trend. Up late chattering away with each other if they napped. The days they only rested, they fell asleep at their normal time.

What we did was make their nap time earlier again (1:30-2:00) and if they fall asleep make sure they are up by 4:30pm. I don't want to give up their rest/nap time because some days they really need it. Some days they only rest for about 45 minutes which is fine because if they don't rest at all they get a little whiny and get into little disagreements with each other easily.

 

QUOTE(CHJH @ Feb 23 2009, 09:29 PM) [snapback]1202453[/snapback]
I never let the boys' much past 2:30 to protect their 7:30 bedtime. I put them down right after lunch - that's usually about 12:30, sometimes a bit sooner.


This was originally our rule too but then slowly but surely, we would put them down at 12:30 or 1 and they wouldn't fall asleep until 1:30 or 2. Then after a while of this, we started putting them down at 1:30 or 2 and they wouldn't fall asleep until 2:30 or 3. That's when we said forget it. It was just too late and I figured if they can stay up that late, they can make it a few more hours and go to bed. The one good thing about no nap is that when you finally put them down for the night, they are often out cold within 60 seconds. I'm not even kidding. It's amazing how quickly they can fall out and it's so nice to not have to deal with the fussies of going to bed. Unfortunately, they are now in big girl beds and things are a little messed up right now but I"m sure we will get back into a routine of things and I have a feeling once spring/summer hits and we are at the beach and parks everyday, they will possibly nap a couple of times a week.

 

I never thought of trying to put them down for naps earlier. We've always had pretty late naps -- at school they start going down around 12:30 (I don't know when they fall asleep), but it works much better with our weekend schedule to aim for 1:30. That means they fall asleep around 2-2:30, especially these days when they aren't as tired. If I tried putting them down earlier, we'd have to give up some morning activities that we really enjoy.

This only started being a problem recently (like a month ago). Until then, they could take long naps and still fall asleep OK -- it sometimes took up to an hour, but they were usually out by 9:30 at the latest. None of this 11:00 business!

I was actually congratulating myself because we managed the transition to big girl beds (though Amy still naps in the PNP because they can't nap in the same room) and preserved the naps. Alas, it looks like the naps might have to go anyway. Last night they were even asleep relatively early (9:30ish), but Sarah was still a basket case this morning.

 

I was going to suggest trying earlier naps, too. With my girls, I sometimes find that it's not so much the length of the nap that interferes with bedtime as how close that nap is to bedtime. Sometimes that doesn't hold true, but generally naps go better when we put them down earlier. (Of course, we don't always achieve the earlier nap since we do our outings and activities in the mornings.)

 

Maybe it's just my kids but I cannot picture a 3-year old that would go down for a nap before 1:30 or 2pm unless they were waking up for the day at 6am or earlier.

More power to you if it works at your house (feel the jealousy?).