3yo Sleep Issues

My (nearly) 3yo is having some major sleep problems that I just can't figure out. He was in a good routine - in bed by 7/7.30pm and usually sleeping through until 6/6.30am.

Now all of a sudden we put him down at his usual time and he just refuses to go to sleep until around 9-10pm. He's not unhappy, just stalling big time and keeps coming out. He'll go to the toilet 2 or 3 times or calls for you, just to show you a toy he's playing with. By 10pm he puts himself back into bed and goes to sleep, but will be up at 4 or 5am crawling into our bed (where he just tosses and turns and doesn't sleep). So even on a "good" night he's only getting around 8 hours sleep !!

I'm sure that's not enough for a VERY active toddler! He has one day nap of 1-2 hours, and I've thought about dropping this but he really seems to need it...

Anyone got any ideas?? We're at our wits end with this one...

thanks freckle - that's what i was afraid of lol!

how long did it take to adjust the schedule, and how did you get her to drop the day sleep? Cian will just take himself off to bed if he's tired...

We found that having a day sleep roughly every second day works ok. If he's sick he'll have one every day and go down at 7 no bother. Some times it suits us to have him up later at night if we are going out or having friends over.

I also found that he went through a stage of the late bedtime with a day sleep but now has a day sleep again most days (just started preschool) and still goes down ok at about 7.30-8.

Without the day sleep he is soooooo grumpy from 3-5pm.

I flip flop as to which is worse- afternoon grump or up later at night.

We had to drop day sleeps as well. It was tough for tne first week and improved after that. She does still need one once a week or so but now she goes to bed sooooooo much easier.   I found going for a walk or to the park whe they start getting frazzled in the afternoons helps too.

I found it was better to leave the daycare naps in place to start with. When my daughter started staying up late at 2 and a half, I found that dropping naps at home was ok, as we could have quiet time and quiet activities when she wasn't coping. At daycare she still has the odd nap, as it's so much more full on.
When I asked them to stop giving her a nap, she was so overtired by midafternoon her behaviour deteriorated and then the evening was just hellish. She often was too tired to eat her dinner and we just had tantrums and so on! Complete nightmare.
That was our experience anyway, and she is pretty temperamental, your laddie may well cope a lot better!!