Sleep Needs for an Almost Three Year Old

M.,

A friend of mine had the same thing happen when her oldest started school. She explained to the older child that his little brother naps during the day and is not ready for bed quite as early as he is. Plus, going to school and learning so much can make a kid more tired than if he was just playing at home. You could always reason with my friend's older child, he saw the logic and accepted the situation.

It might not work for all children, but it might be worth a try. Then if you wanted to slowly change the younger son's bed time you could go to bed 15 minutes earlier every few days. I would encourage any child to nap or at least rest for as long as possible.

Good luck,
R.

Hi M.,

Must be tough to have a child who doesn't want to go to sleep.

Three years old may be a little young to eliminate naps, but mine stopped around that time, so why not try.

Also, you may have two events happening here for Kaden: As a 3-year-old, he doesn't like change, and this is a major change from his point of view. Why not explain to him the going-to-bed earlier thing, then create reward system for him when he goes to bed calmly. It already works at that age.

Also, it may be that Kaden is naturally a night owl. It runs in the family, so if his father or you are night owls, there is a good chance that Kaden is as well. This rhythm is already visible from a very young age, and definitely by 3. If this is the case, Kaden will always have trouble falling asleep early, even when there is school. A friend of mine has a child like that. She decided to put her to bed at the regular time, with the lights off, but with the understanding that she doesn't have to sleep right then and there, she can play in the dark, as long as she does it in bed, silently and calmly. So far, it's worked quite well.

Hope this helps,
K.

M.-
i would ditch the nap. i have 3 kids, ages 4 and twins that are 3 and they all share the same bedroom. naptime started getting so stressfull and would take us sometimes 2 hrs to get them down and then tehy woudl be up until 10. we dropped the naps and on weekends they go to bed without a struggle by 8:30. good luck.

Hi M.,
I don't believe in setting an age for naps and requiring siblings to need the same amount of sleep, but I viewed the naps as sleep the kids needed, not a convenience for me. At 3, he may not need a nap anymore if he's sleeping around 11 hours at night. My oldest was just turning 3 when she gave up the naps, and I was happy (I was a working mom and the naps wrecked our weekends). My son on the other hand continued to nap until right around the time he turned 4 (and I wished he'd have continued a few more months since I was going through chemo and it was summer so no break for me with preschool), so for me, they napped until they simply didn't need that sleep any longer. I would experiment to see if the earlier bed and wake time make him not need the extra sleep - and sometimes transitioning out of a nap is a little awkward and there may be a bit of whininess - sometimes they don't really need the big nap but aren't 100% fine without it. Good luck!

Both of my daughters gave up their naps by the time they were each 1 and 1/2. They just started to fight it and take longer to get down so I just gave them up. But in doing that I had set an earlier bed time and that seemed to work better. Now with my oldest in school they are both in bed at 7:30 and asleep by 8. We have to be up by 6:45 so my daughter has time to eat and get dressed before school. I would probably ditch the nap because the couple of times my 3 year old has had a nap and I have kept her up later than my 5 1/2 year old there is always a fight at bedtime. Hope this helps and good luck to you.