How much sleep do your 2-year olds get?

My boys are nearly 23 months, and have admittedly never been perfect sleepers. One boy has been STTN only since about 16 months, and one did briefly for a month or two around that age as well, then reverted to waking up once or twice a night. I never minded the night wakings much since I would just nurse him back to sleep whenever he woke, but now that we have night weaned, the wakings have become more frequent and it takes me a lot longer to get him back to sleep. He's going through some sort of separation anxiety and panics if he wakes up and I'm not there, and as a result I often find myself sleeping on a mattress on the floor beside his crib so that I can settle him quickly again with minimal disruption to my own sleep (usually my presence is enough to settle him back down).

Added to all this is the fact that both my boys have decided that 5:30am is an appropriate wake up time every day. With all the night wakings, and such an early wake up, I feel like a walking zombie most days. And most importantly I miss my own bed!

They are and always have been excellent nappers. They'll sleep 3.5 hours in the afternoon if I'll let them. I normally wake them up after 3 hours, but is that still too much sleep? They go to bed at 7 (though they don't normally fall asleep until 7:30 or so), and ideally would sleep until 7am. Should I start cutting back on their afternoon nap to try to extend their night sleep? They HATE when I wake them up early from their nap and are very cranky for the rest of the day - d they get over this? For those of you whose children sleep 12 hours at night - how long is their nap?

Thanks in advance for your help, everyone! And for the record, I know my life would be a lot easier if I just did CIO. I've tried it a couple of times and chickened out after about 2 hours of crying.

 

Yeah, I wouldn't be able to do CIO for 2 hrs either! Usually I can only go for 20 min.

Mine are a little older, but they've been on the same sleeping schedule (or close to it) for awhile now. They normally got to bed around 8:00-8:30 & sleep till 7:00-8:00. They take a nap around 10am and usually sleep 3 hours. For awhile they would also take a 2nd nap around 3:00, but lately they haven't been doing that. If they do, they end up sleeping WAY too late & mine are also extremely cranky if you wake them up in the afternoon.

Was it recently that you weaned? I wonder if that has something to do with it. Maybe he got in the habit of having that & is just trying to adjust. Have you tried a little night light? My little guy kind of went through a phase where he'd wake up & get really scared......I put a little light in there & he was fine. Sorry, I guess I don't have anything very helpful! Hope it gets better!

 

We night weaned a couple of months ago, but the sleep problems actually started before that. That's why I stopped nursing through the night - the nursing was no longer working to get him back to sleep, so I figured it was time to stop. We still nurse at bedtime, but that's it.

I've been wondering if he may be afraid of the dark, and have tried various levels of light to see if it makes a difference. Lately we've been using a bright night light and leaving the hall light on with their door ajar. Now I'm worrying it's too light in there because last night he woke up and just wouldn't go back to sleep!

 

You may want to check out this poll I started, it should give you a rough idea of napping around 2 y/o napping

Mine go to bed at 7pm and wake at 7:30/8am and nap from 1-3pm. I did CIO at 11 months (also night weaned then) it involved alot more crying than 2hrs But for us it was the best move.

 

Thanks for the link to that poll. It looks like a 2 hour nap is pretty common, so maybe 3.5 hours is too long for my boys, especially since this means they often wake up at 4pm only to go to bed again at 7. The whole concept of 'sleep begets sleep' from HSHHC is so engrained into me that I've been afraid to limit their naps. When they were younger, they did sleep better at night when they had long afternoon naps, but maybe that changes when they get older.

I suppose I could also move their bedtime to 8Pm, but I relish my toddler-free evenings and would like to keep a little time to myself if at all possible. The few nights we've put them to bed at 8 it didn't make a difference with wakeup time, but maybe after a few nights they'd start to sleep later.

I really wish I could stomach CIO. At 16 months we did a bit of CIO, but they never went for longer than 30 minutes. Now they seem to go for hours. I think if it was just me dealing with it I might be able to manage, but my dh can't stand the sound of crying, and he normally gives in before I do, either that or I have to listen to him complaining, which is sometimes worse than the crying!

 

I would try to limit the afternoon nap to 2 hours and see if that will help. It sounds like they must be very tired if they are napping that long. It might still take them a few days to start waking later but it will be a start!

 

I think I would limit the afternoon nap as well.

My two sleep 12 hours at night and Emilie naps about 1.5-2 hours and Trevor is generally 3 hours for naps.

 

Thanks to everyone for your advice. I only let them nap for 2 hours today, and put them to bed at their regular bedtime, 7:00. I'll try this for a few days to see if there's any improvement. Here's hoping there's more sleep in my future! :unsure:

 

My girls sleep 11 hours a night (due to ketotic hypoglycemia they can't go more than 12 hours without eating) and take a 1 1/2 to 2 hour nap. If you don't want to do CIO, you might want to consider reading the Baby Whisperer Answers All of Your Questions. It is more for parents with toddlers. We used the pick up/put down method. My husband and I did it together so we could each tackle one kid. The first night it took us 20 minutes, the second night 10 minutes and the third night they slept through. Good Luck!

 

My kids go to bed between 7:15-7:45 and sleep until 6:45-7:15. They'll nap anywhere from 1.5-3.5 hours during the day. My belief is if they need the sleep, they need it and as long as they are sleeping through the night then it works.

 

I woke them up after 2 hours of napping yesterday, and I saw a bit of imrpovement last night. My poor sleeper still woke up twice, but when I was unable to get him back to sleep in his crib at 4 am I brought him into the guestroom bed with me (bad habit to start, I know - but he just WOULDN'T go back to sleep), and we all slept in until 7:30. It's been a looong time since we slept so late. I'm going to continue limiting the naps, and see if this trend continues.

Thanks to everyone for your help!

 

I would cut back their afternoon nap, maybe to a max of 2 hours. I did find that when my girls sleep longer than that they don't sleep well at night. So I only let them sleep longer than 2 hours in the afternoon if they are sick, but they pretty much wake up before or around 2 hours anyways.

They sleep 7:30pm until 7:00am. We'd like to shift that to 8:00pm to 7:00am for the summer, we'll see how that goes.

 

Well, we've now been limiting their naps to 2 hours for two days, and last night was pretty horrible. One ds was up once at 12, again at 1, then at 5 woke up and refused to go back to sleep. I tried bringing him into bed with me since that had worked the night before but no luck. At naptime, bedtime and when he wakes up in the night now he won't go to sleep unless I sit beside his crib holding his hand - this can take up to an hour. I'm going to give the shorter nap plan another day or two, but if my nights continue being this bad, I might as well let them sleep as long as they want during the day so I can get some rest time then at least.

Maybe instead I should try making their bedtime a bit later? Right now we put them down at 7, but they're not falling asleep until 8 or so. They used to go to sleep so beautifully - we'd read them a story then leave the room at 7 with them still fully awake. We'd never hear a peep from them and they'd be asleep within minutes. This all changed when we changed the clocks for spring. It messed up their schedules, and bedtime and nights in general have been a nightmare since then.

I'm tempted to try CIO again, especially after reading about what good sleepers some of you have as a result of it. My fear is that even if I'm strong enough to let them cry for 3+ hours in the evening, will I be strong enough to let them cry that long when they wake up during the night? All I know is that something needs to change. Many nights I'm getting less sleep than I did when they were newborns!

 

My girls have not been good sleepers - waking a few times at night up until 20 months or so - I feel your pain. Currently (finally) they both sleep most nights all the way through from 7:30pm to 7am with a 1.5 to 2 hour nap. What turned the corner for us is not going in when we first hear one fussing. We needed to let them fuss and learn to go back to sleep. It's not exactly CIO it's more like cry - wait and see. If one gets very upset, we go in but never take them out of the crib unless sick, needs a diaper change etc. They need to learn that crying doesn't get mom or dad to come running unless there's a very good reason.

We really were exhausted and are still catching up. We did move the bedtime from 7pm to 7:30 because they weren't going to sleep anyway and by 7:45/8, they're sound asleep. Good luck!