I have two and a half year old twin boys who are, as a rule, pretty good sleepers. They have a pretty consistent routine - they go to bed at night between 8 and 8:30, wake up around 6:30, naptime between noon and 1pm. Lately, though, one of my sons will often skip his nap. I know he still needs his nap because, without fail, if he skips a nap, he staggers around like a drunken sailor two hours before bedtime and is very cranky/emotional. I haven't changed their routines (we do stories, etc, before naptime and bedtime) or their bedtimes, and my other son still takes his nap, so I'm confused as to why my son is often skipping a nap he obviously needs. Since the boys share a room, leaving him in his room for "quiet time" isn't an option, because he'll scream to wake his brother up. One thing I've noticed about him is that he is a little more active than my other son (more fidgety in general), so I don't know if this has anything to do with it or not. I would greatly appreciate any advice. Thanks!
Thank you for the advice and words of encouragement!
My daughter is going on 4 and she tries to get out of her naptime and NO WAY naptime is my time I make she sit in her room and hopefully she passes out but if she doesn't she is not allowed to get off her bed until I feel it is time to move.
Hello! Kudos to you for having your sons on such a healthy sleep schedule!!!! Since your sons are getting the age-appropriate amount of sleep (according to Pediatricians), I recommend you "stay the course" and keep putting him down for a nap. I believe it's important to reinforce that this is his nap time/downtime, since he seems to be testing you. Personally, I think two and half is much too young to eliminate naps and have read that an afternoon nap is usually maintained until the 3's. More importantly, your son clearly needs the sleep (as you can see at the end of the day), so he should work through this and return to napping.
However, I also understand the problem of the one child keeping the other one awake!!! It's completely maddening and frustrating. What I ended-up doing when I was having such issues was putting the loud child to nap in the playpen in a different room. Believe me...I KNOW this is not ideal. Or, you could just maintain the routine in his own room, at the expense of your other son's sleep. Having tried this too (and this worked the best for us), it is NOT an ideal solution either! But this really should be a temporary situation and (hopefully) should be resolved within a week. If you go 2 weeks and he does not return to napping, that's when I would start considering that he didn't need the nap.
Good Luck!!
make sure the non-sleeper is not getting into the cookiejar or anything else that could be charging him up. Also, maybe he needs a little more exercize than the other twin to tire him out.
well it sounds like your doing a great job on keeping them scheduled. my identical twin boys are now 7. I feel my first mistake was keeping them in the same room. it's like having your best friend over every night for a sleep over. it was TOUGH! even though they are twins they are different, I have one that has always required more sleep, and the other doesn't. I hope that helps a little
K.
