Dropping the day sleep.... transition!

Hello - I am sure many of your ladies have been through this or are going through this...

DD GAbrielle is 2 and a quarter. She still IMO needs to have her day sleep and if she doesn't have it she is pretty difficult to keep awake. However when she does have it she will stay awake until 9:30-11 at night - completely wide awake and happy as can be. Her day sleep is normally from 12-2 and she is with her carer from Mon-Fri. I have asked the carer to try and wake her up at 1 which she has managed a couple of times but even still Gabrielle can stay up sooo late. I really really really miss the little girl that went merrily along to bed at 7:30 and I am getting quite frustrated as I have no time to get anything done in the evenings as I usually save it all for when she goes to bed.

I have been thinking about some different things to try because it can't go on... but I would love to hear if anyone else is going through or has been through this phase and what did you do or are you doing??

TIA!

I would suggest that you just try dropping the sleep and have *quiet time* so time in her room doing low key stuff - puzzles, books drawing if she can be trusted with crayons on her own . Then bring the start of bedtime forward to 6.30pm if she is really wasted. Not saying she should be in bed by 6.30 but be on the way.

When Amy started kindy and had to drop her afternoon sleep/rest she was often in bed about 6.40 and sound asleep by 6.45 .

Good luck - it is really tricky when they are dropping sleeps at any age.

Daniel gets put to bed between 7-7:30 every night without fail. The only time he is up later is if we are out. He knows once hes in bed he is there to stay. Doesn't matter what he has done during the day thats how it is.

I'm really looking forward to the "answer" to this as we are having the same problem.

Here is what I "was" doing and then what I am trying.

Tom used to wake at 7am, go to sleep about 1pm and sleep for 2.5 to 3 hours. It didnt matter what time he went down, thats how long he slept. Then he would happily trot off at 7 -7.30. It all turned to custard when Daylight Savings started (but that maybe a coincidence.

Lately he has been looking tired early in the morning, refusing his afternoon sleep, being totally buggered and crashing at 6.15-6,30ish. Its so easy to get him to bed at night so I have been running with it. Its not ideal but hey, it beat having a sleep and then being up at 9pm!!!

However, I have noticed he had been grumpy, argumentative, not interested in eating, not interested in playing by himself, biting his brother and at daycare, wanting to hang out with the under 2s more and more and he doesnt play outside. I am wondering if he is really sleep deprived. His teacher mentioned to me that she thinks he's really tired there. (as a side note, it just occured to me that this could all fit with glue ear which we are checking on Tuesday).

So I decided he HAS to have his afternoon sleep. I have been advised to try a) putting him down earlier...eg 11.30 or b) waking him earlier. Putting him down earlier sounds hard so I am compromising. Today, I picked him up early from daycare (partly because James needed to sleep and I didnt want to wake him etc) so I picked him up at 11.45 instead of 12.45 and took him home, fed him and then with James fast asleep I sat in Tom's bed with him reading stories till he fell asleep...took 5 stories. He fell asleep at 1.30. I am going to pop in around 3pm and see if he is coming out of a sleep cycle then and if so wake him up.

I'll let you know how that works. I figure its a better compromise to let him have 90 min and get up than 3 hours and not sleep at night. I think that was making him more sleep deprived so we were in a really vicious cycle. I hope to break that somehow.

I find (and you probably do too) that its really hard to take the time to get Tom to sleep when James is awake so I have to time things prefectly to get James asleep before I try Tom. At the moment Tom is needing help and I dont really mind that. Its "our" time together reading and I think he needs it. Besides, I guess thats my job right now

I'll be sure to let you know if any of these tricks work.

OK so have been trying the short day nap thing and all that it resulted in was a really really grumpy PITA evil child all afternoon before she came right at about 5ish and would still stay up till 9-10pm.

So I have decided she can keep the sleep and we'll let her sleep as long as she needs. I am going to make evenings way more low key in the evenings though. After bathtime I will close all of the curtains, turn off the tv and we will just do quiet non-stimulating play, like reading books, chatting.... maybe even massage - I gave her a foot massage once and it really chilled her out.

Other than that I will just resign to the fact that she might be a wee bit of a night owl for a while and cross my fingers that it's a phase.....

and look forward to the end of daylight savings