Question on 18 month old sleep habbits

[mw]

Hi all, I have a question on my 18 month old, she sometimes takes 2
naps and sometimes she only takes 1, but the bad thing is, when she
takes 2 the second one is around 4 or 5 and then she will not go to bed
until 11:00 or even later sometimes. How do I get her in a routine,
where she goes to bed early and wakes up early. One night she went to
bed around 11:30 or so and woke up around 10:00 and that is too late
for me to be waking up, but then I have a hard time waking up when she
goes to bed that late. Please help with some advice.

Thank you,
MW

[toto]

On 17 Mar 2005 20:09:15 -0800, "mw" > wrote:

>Hi all, I have a question on my 18 month old, she sometimes takes 2
>naps and sometimes she only takes 1, but the bad thing is, when she
>takes 2 the second one is around 4 or 5 and then she will not go to bed
>until 11:00 or even later sometimes. How do I get her in a routine,
>where she goes to bed early and wakes up early. One night she went to
>bed around 11:30 or so and woke up around 10:00 and that is too late
>for me to be waking up, but then I have a hard time waking up when she
>goes to bed that late. Please help with some advice.
>
>Thank you,
>MW

What time is her first nap usually when she takes two?
In general, if she is up at 6 am, that first nap should be
no later than 9 am so that the second one won't be so late.

You might try waking her after an hour or hour and a half
of the first nap and see if her second one doesn't work
out to be earlier.

She should probably not nap more than 3 hours during the
day - if that is two naps, make one 2 hours and the other
one an hour perhaps.

The other alternative is to try to push the naps into a single
nap by stretching her gradually in the morning and giving
her an early lunch. I did find that sometimes kids will perk
up after eating and stay up another hour or so before they
need to nap.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

[hobbes]

"mw" > wrote in message
ps.com...
> Hi all, I have a question on my 18 month old, she sometimes takes 2
> naps and sometimes she only takes 1, but the bad thing is, when she
> takes 2 the second one is around 4 or 5 and then she will not go to bed
> until 11:00 or even later sometimes. How do I get her in a routine,
> where she goes to bed early and wakes up early. One night she went to
> bed around 11:30 or so and woke up around 10:00 and that is too late
> for me to be waking up, but then I have a hard time waking up when she
> goes to bed that late. Please help with some advice.


I would do my best to merge the naps into one early afternoon nap. By early,
I mean as soon as lunch is done. It can be a little difficult to keep a
child awake in the morning when they're used to taking a nap, but it can be
done, and she's certainly old enough to do it. What I did was to offer a
snack about when nap would happen--food often revives them. Have some
periods of quiet time in the morning to give her rest, but also have some
good rowdy play time. Don't put her in the car when she's likely to fall
asleep--it can be impossible to keep them awake if they're in the car. Start
by having lunch quite early--11 or 11:30. Then as soon as she's done, you
can put her down for a nap. Then be ready to put her to bed by 7 or 8 in the
evening. Eventually, you can put her down a little later--but I'd never go
later than 2:00. DD has been down to one nap for at least 6 months, and I
usually put her down around 1:00.

IME, when I moved from one nap to two, the naps were a little on the short
side, but as the kids adjusted, they got longer and longer. DD is up to 2
hours most days; when she was taking two naps they generally didn't total
much more than that, so it's actually quite freeing to just have one longer
nap in the afternoon. Makes mornings much more open.

--
Jodi
SAHM to Oliver (4 years)
and Arwen (23 months)