Truly Ready for One Nap??

If he were in child care he would already be down to one nap. To move to the toddler room at one they have to be taking one nap and used to sleeping on a cot. So it is a normal age for them to start doing just one nap.

It may take some time but all my grand-kids were down to one nap by their first birthday and right after that we moved the to toddler beds in our room. So we had a baby bed and a toddler bed plus our queen in our room. It wasn't too crowded. They were easy to transition because they had not discovered the joy of climbing out of their crib and playing.

He should start working towards that anyway. That will free up your time much more. You will be able to do more things due to having both the morning and afternoon opened up.

You may have to adjust his lunch schedule until he adjusts to the 1 nap. If he is up early, try keeping him occupied until 10:30 and feed him then. Yes, it is early for lunch, but then he will get down for a nap earlier, and you can give him a snack when he wakes up to last him until dinner.

My son sometimes gets cranky/tired late morning, but mid-morning snack will help. He usually eats breakfast between 7-8 and then around 10 he will have a little snack and then lunch at 11:30. You could try a snack to perk him up?

Otherwise, in my opinion, the transition from 2 to 1 naps is that - a transition and will take some time for both you and him to get used to and get things figured out :-) I also recommend the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child - it has some AWESOME tips and justification for letting young children sleep when they need to - but it sounds like you already know the importance of sleep :-)

If he's getting up at 6:30 am, try giving him lunch around 11 and then the longer afternoon nap might happen, IF he's not crashing out at 9:00.

I think what you'll find is that sometimes he'll be tired and take a morning nap and some days he'll make it til after lunch. I don't know of any magic formula--all kids are different. It's good that you're flexible as you can kind of let him lead for now til a routine settles in.

Personally I'd go by his cues as to whether he needs a nap in the morning or not. and if he skips the afternoon nap completely? Keep ooching the bedtime up for the bear!

My son did this around 11 months. He was still always tired around 9 am, but if I kept him preoccupied, he was distracted enough not to get too crabby. We started with the nap being at 11 am and then lunch after the nap. When we did this, he did go to bed a little earlier, I think about 30 minutes. Now that he is a little older and he has gotten used to the one nap schedule, he eats lunch at 11 and naps at 12. We had to force to one nap because my sn would not take a 2nd nap, no matter how tired he was.

Our boy is 18 months, at around 15 months, his morning naps got shorter and shorter. He now naps for 2+ hours in the afternoon, and as long as 3 hours on some days. Bedtime is still 8pm, and he wakes at around 7am. He sleeps in until 7:30/ 8am on weekends.

We followed his lead. Naptime has not been a struggle as yet.

We also let him cry if he wakes up mid nap. We find that if he hasn't had his full compliment of sleep he's a cranky-pooch.

Good luck to you and yours,
F. B.

I may be in the minority here, but I would try really hard to stick to two naps. I know when my son was making the transition (around 15-16 months) there were definitely days he needed two and days he needed one. On days he took one, they were still pretty early (11 ish as compared to a "normal" afternoon nap time) he would go to bed really early - by about an hour earlier than usual. This is to prevent him from getting over-tired. Please really caution against getting over-tired - if he does, he will struggle even more with naps and then it will be really challenging to fix and know what he needs.

Esp because you're a SAHM and have some flexibility with his naps - this is what I would try.... For a good two weeks or so I would continue to lay him down for each nap and be consistent with trying to get him to sleep. If he wakes 30 minutes in - let him fuss and cry for a bit so he will learn to stop waking himself up at 30 minutes in. Sounds to me he's just trained himself to starts taking short naps. He's at an age he realizes when he falls asleep he is missing out on all the fun the world has to offer. If he doesn't get enough daytime sleep - put him to bed quite early at night.

If after a few weeks, you are still struggling, you could try transitioning to one nap. Just beware it will start by being like a 10 am nap (and little later every few days) and during those weeks you will need an ultra early bed time. You can see if this alleviates your problems.

I would guess that if you are consistent for a couple solid weeks with insisting on two nap days and work to retrain him to take longer naps, he will re-establish this pattern. My son has/had multiple occasions where he will challenge current sleep patterns and almost always if I am consistent in my expectations for him, he will fall back into it within a week or so. Seems to me 12 months is way young to go to one nap, but then again a huge portion of children are way under-rested and parents just tend to accept this as normal.

Good luck to you!!

PS I really recommend the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth. It's fantastic, based on a child's developmental needs and has been a life saver since my son was about a month old. I still refer to it all the time when a sleep challenge comes up!