Hellobee Boards

I’d get an Ok to Wake clock! I think he’s def old enough to understand—my boys started using them at 2.5 or so

My 3.5 year old just went through this. We got him a hatch light and can set the color to whatever he wants at night then it goes off at whatever time I set. It was a nightmare before this. But we also had to drop nap and move his bedtime to 7:30.

Honestly for a napping 3 year old that bedtime sounds way too early. I would wake up by 3pm most definitely but I would also push bedtime back. When my kids were 3yo and still napping bedtime was more like 8pm.

I believe 3yo’s need 11-13 hours of sleep in 24 hours. So if he’s napping 2 hrs, you’re looking at 9-11 hours of nighttime sleep. He’s currently getting enough sleep in 24 hours, you just need to adjust the bedtime to get your desired wake up time.

While every kid is of course different, that sounds like a lot of sleep time for a 3 year old. We dropped my 3 year olds nap at 2.5yo because his night time sleep went down hill. It worked like a charm. He still does “quiet time” in bed for about a hour every day with books. I would guess the first few days will be an adjustment and cranky, but after that his body will adjust and make the night time sleep longer to compensate. My son was so much more pleasant and we’ll rested once we dropped the nap.

I think the nap might be the issue, If I were you I would try to drop it. A child that age should get at least 6 hours of wake time before bedtime. With a 6:45pm bedtime that means the nap needs to end at 12:45pm. If you're going to stick with the nap I would try to move bedtime later, something like 8/8:30pm, and make sure that nap is over by 2pm.