Toddler goes to sleep late

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's the bed situation? Toddler bed? Crib? Are there bumpers? Is it hot/cold in the room?

My child sleeps horribly when it is too hot. And it helped a LOT to put the foam bumpers on her bed so she wouldn't roll off.

agree, I would start here. sometimes it is a simple fix. because of SIDS fears we tend to make toddlers' beds really un-cozy. try blankets, pillows if you don't have them, a stuffed animal for comfort.

i didn't have a pillow in my kid's crib for the longest time because "safe sleep" was drilled into my head. once I got her one, she slept deeper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s the nap at daycare. They have no incentive to wake her up. You either need to switch to home care and cut the nap or just suck it up and do a later bedtime. Putting her in bed not tired isn’t fair on her either.

Don't home daycares need to offer the rest time too? My oldest actually dropped the nap when they moved from in-home daycare to a center at 3.5. The in-home daycare had fewer kids and more younger ones and they made naptime really calm and dark. More going on at the center and more kids, he really only napped there when he was really tired and eventually not at all. They let the kids lay quietly on their cots with books, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s the nap at daycare. They have no incentive to wake her up. You either need to switch to home care and cut the nap or just suck it up and do a later bedtime. Putting her in bed not tired isn’t fair on her either.

Don't home daycares need to offer the rest time too? My oldest actually dropped the nap when they moved from in-home daycare to a center at 3.5. The in-home daycare had fewer kids and more younger ones and they made naptime really calm and dark. More going on at the center and more kids, he really only napped there when he was really tired and eventually not at all. They let the kids lay quietly on their cots with books, etc.

there is no legal requirement to make kids sleep for 2+ hours every day. But all the daycare centers we looked at did it from 1230-3 every day. Even for 4 and 5 year olds. I’m home places are more flexible. Or an in home sitter would be too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s the nap at daycare. They have no incentive to wake her up. You either need to switch to home care and cut the nap or just suck it up and do a later bedtime. Putting her in bed not tired isn’t fair on her either.

Don't home daycares need to offer the rest time too? My oldest actually dropped the nap when they moved from in-home daycare to a center at 3.5. The in-home daycare had fewer kids and more younger ones and they made naptime really calm and dark. More going on at the center and more kids, he really only napped there when he was really tired and eventually not at all. They let the kids lay quietly on their cots with books, etc.

there is no legal requirement to make kids sleep for 2+ hours every day. But all the daycare centers we looked at did it from 1230-3 every day. Even for 4 and 5 year olds. I’m home places are more flexible. Or an in home sitter would be too.

You really need to ask. The state of MD absolutely has mandated rest periods at childcares. Centers often have two shifts of teachers but at in home daycares it’s often the same staff all day and the nap time is their only break. So I would not assume they are going to be more flexible and engage your child while the rest of the children are napping.

I also wouldn’t move to an in home sitter just for this, but YMMV.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I'm going to go against the grain here and say it is not unusual for 2 and 3 year olds to develop some trouble falling asleep at night. My kid was not in daycare and took a short nap until 3 and then dropped it altogether at 3, and she still sometimes struggled to fall asleep at a reasonable time.

I think it was because her brain was accumulating all this new knowledge, once she was pretty fluent with language, and thinking about it all kept her up at night.

The two things we did to ease these phases (she went through several between 2.5 and 4) were:

* Offer calming tools and activities that can help relax the mind and fall asleep. We allowed her to look at books in bed, listen to gentle stories or sleep meditations on a bluetooth speaker (we controlled the stories by phone from the living room), used a star projector light that moved to help lull sleep, and when all else failed, would lie down next to her and close our eyes and ask her to do the same until she fell asleep (last resort because we didn't want her to become reliant on it, but also most effective -- deployed when we felt it was necessary to make sleep happen)

* Follow good pre-sleep routines that tended to result in best sleep. A post-dinner playground visit, even if just 20 minutes, followed by a warm bath, snuggles and book reading, and then consistent tuck in routines, tended to provide a good transition to relaxation time, which led to better sleep. More rushed evenings, skipping an active playtime or bath, or variations in bed times from day to day, tended to cause her to be more wound up and have more trouble settling.

It's a process but having come out the other side, she learned some good tools for falling asleep on her own but will also ask for help when she needs it. She's 6 now and will read in bed on her own after we read to her, and then decide on her own to turn out the light by about 8pm and close her eyes and fall asleep. Very occasionally she still struggles falling asleep, and on those nights she will ask us to play a story on the speaker, or occasionally to come lie down with her for a few minutes. This is pretty rare and often happens after a challenging day of school or a shift in schedule (jet lag, daylight savings, getting over being sick) so we are okay with it -- she will fall asleep within 5-10 minutes so it's not burdensome for us.

It's not always about the nap. Learning to fall asleep once you achieve a higher level of cognition is a skill that takes effort.

THIS, X 1000

[Anonymous]

I don’t think it’s necessarily the nap. My kid is 3.5 and still naps at daycare and at home from 12:30-2 or even 3. Bedtime routine starts at 6:30 and he is in bed by 7:30. We don’t allow any television during the week and he spends lots of time outside.

Evening routine:
Dinner at 5:30
Kid plays from 6-6:30 while parents clean up or do other chores like put baby to bed
6:30-7:00 brush teeth, bath, pajamas
7-7:30 read books

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it’s necessarily the nap. My kid is 3.5 and still naps at daycare and at home from 12:30-2 or even 3. Bedtime routine starts at 6:30 and he is in bed by 7:30. We don’t allow any television during the week and he spends lots of time outside.

Evening routine:
Dinner at 5:30
Kid plays from 6-6:30 while parents clean up or do other chores like put baby to bed
6:30-7:00 brush teeth, bath, pajamas
7-7:30 read books

What time does the 3.5 YO wake up in the morning?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it’s necessarily the nap. My kid is 3.5 and still naps at daycare and at home from 12:30-2 or even 3. Bedtime routine starts at 6:30 and he is in bed by 7:30. We don’t allow any television during the week and he spends lots of time outside.

Evening routine:
Dinner at 5:30
Kid plays from 6-6:30 while parents clean up or do other chores like put baby to bed
6:30-7:00 brush teeth, bath, pajamas
7-7:30 read books

What time does the 3.5 YO wake up in the morning?

He wakes up between 6:30 and 7.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it’s necessarily the nap. My kid is 3.5 and still naps at daycare and at home from 12:30-2 or even 3. Bedtime routine starts at 6:30 and he is in bed by 7:30. We don’t allow any television during the week and he spends lots of time outside.

Evening routine:
Dinner at 5:30
Kid plays from 6-6:30 while parents clean up or do other chores like put baby to bed
6:30-7:00 brush teeth, bath, pajamas
7-7:30 read books

What time does the 3.5 YO wake up in the morning?

He wakes up between 6:30 and 7.

This is an unrealistic amount of sleep for many 3 year olds! It’s like 11-13 hours total in a 24 hour period for the 3-5 age group so many do not need 11-12 overnight anymore at 3 if they are still napping.

OP, my 2.5 year old takes a 2 hour nap and sleeps 10.5-11 overnight. He’s in bed at 8:30pm and up at 7:30/8am, but he often takes until 9pm to fall asleep as he unwinds. He’s happy and still getting plenty of sleep in a 24 hour period so I’m not willing to cut his nap shorter to bump bedtime back up. This works for us.