Hellobee Boards

Can you institute rest time? Just put her in her room with some books and toys and just tell her she needs to be quiet in her room or stay in her bed for an hour. That way if she's tired she can take a nap, if not she can read and quietly play for an hour. Even if she doesn't sleep some rest time is important. If she does sleep I'd cap the nap at an hour.

@Mrs. Sunshine: My daughter turned 3 in September and has been done with naps for a few months. We noticed she had a very hard time going to sleep on days she napped - she'd be up until like 8:30 when her bedtime used to be 7-7:30. And getting her down for naps was horrendous. Crying, complaining, etc.

We dropped the nap and started doing quiet time. I put a CD player in her room and she listens to and reads those Read Along Storybooks - the ones that have a CD that tells the kids when to turn the page. I would say she falls asleep about once a week listening to those. The other days, at least she's laying in her bed for 20 minutes quietly.

I don't feel like this is a perfect solution because she does still get kind of cranky in the early afternoon during the time she would have been napping, but dropping the nap seemed like the solution that worked the best for us. Bedtime became much much easier after she dropped the nap and she started sleeping later in the mornings, so she's getting about the same amount of sleep.

@magnolia: My son is 26 months and only naps sporadically. He has always been an awesome night sleeper. No nap for the last few days and he slept 12 hours straight at night. He is home with my husband, so we don't have to worry about early rising, so I still get to see him in the evening. Now bedtime is at 8pm instead of closer to 9:30.