I have a very happy and smart 15 month old son. He's been sleeping through the night since he was 9 months old. He's been taking two naps daily. One in the morning at 9am and one in the afternoon at 2pm. He's very active and playful when he is awake. He's been on a schedule since he was 9 months old. The signs i know that he's tired is: he gets fussy and he starts rubbing his eyes and yawning.
Recently he has been going through hard times. He throws tantrums everyday if I say "no" to him or I don't allow him to do something. He's been fighting his two naps like crazy! I'm so frustrated to the point that I cry because i know that he needs to take naps in order for him to have a good nights sleep. He shows the signs that he is tired but he refuses to nap when i try to make him sleep. He will hit me if I attempt to make him sleep by holding him in my arms. I pat his butt, i rub his back, i cradle and dance him. But he doesn't like any of it. I tried putting him in the crib to let him sleep on his own since he doesn't like me holding him to sleep but sometimes he'll be awake playing for an hour at a time.
Please I need advice on how i can make him take his naps without fighting with me? And i'm wondering if i should transition him to one nap a day instead? Any advice and tips will be greatly appreciated!!
Thank you guys so much for taking your time to answer my questions with great advice. It was very helpful!!
when is he waking up and when is he going to bed? he may need a slight schedule change. Depending on when he wakes up he may need a earlier nap or a later nap and put him down when he starts throwing the tantrums so he is not overly tired that is what i do with my 2 yr old and it has helped a lot with the fighting at nap/bed time
Sounds like you need to drop the second nap. Try to push first nap later. You can do this by extending it gradually over the next few days. My 20 month old naps once from 12-2. I dropped his 2nd nap around 18 months. Typically, the 2nd naps stops around 12-18 months. Good luck!
Time for one nap! Try lunch at 11:30 and nap at noon. If he can make it! Good luck. I also found 15 months hard bc my dau didn't have that many words but it was so much better by 18 mos.
Hi! When I read your post I remember feeling exactly the same way when my daughters were 15 months. In fact, I went back to the website that I have kept up for my girls since they were babies to see what I wrote back then. Sure enough I was frustrated about many of the same things. It was right at that time that I began the initial phase of weaning out the 2 naps a day. By 18 months they were both down to 1 nap per day. I even wrote a comment about my eldest that said, "Rick and I want to know where our happy baby went!" I wrote this because it was right at this time (15 months) that her tantrums picked up, she started testing her boundries, she expressed her frustrations physically, and most of all she fought her naps terribly. She even learned the word NO- ugh! The good news for us was that both girls were down to 1 nap by 18 months and they both started to show more affection for us on their own terms which was refreshing among all the new discipline stuff we were dealing with. I did start some basic time-outs at 15 months. Unlike the experts feel, I used the crib as a time out place because she was still so little. Sometimes I had to do 3 very short ones in a row before she would follow a direction. As she got older I moved the time out to the bottom step of our stairs. They don't really understand time outs until much later, but I wanted to build a foundation of following directions early on.
Hang in there...I always feel the "middle of the age year" is tough. 18 months, 2 1/2, 3 1/2, 4 1/2 etc.... it seems the beginning and end of a year things run a little smoother.
yup...the old "transitioning to one nap a day".........typical.
Good luck!
I think most children by 15 months are, or have, transitioned to one nap per day. Usually in the early afternoon, soon after lunch. He may be fighting you because he no longer needs two naps. The transitions are always challenging, though.
